


Unfortunate Misconceptions

by candlesneedflame



Series: The Teenage Vigilante's Guide [8]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I repeat, Mr. Miyagi Matt, No Spideypool, Read at Own Risk, Serious Injuries, THE GROUP CHAT, WADE WILSON KILLS PEDOPHILES FOR FUN, Whump, but not in the tags of the fic because I don't want to spoil it, incredibly upsetting topics in later chapters, there will be trigger warnings in chapter end notes, this will get very upsetting starting in chapter 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2020-08-11 14:18:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 57,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20154982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlesneedflame/pseuds/candlesneedflame
Summary: Since the Incident, gossip columns and trashy checkout lane magazines have taken to printing and reporting rumors surrounding the newest brand of celebrities: superheroes. Most of the time these rumors blow over in a week when fresher, juicier drama comes to light, but the tabloids have a death grip on their latest misconception and refuse to let go, no matter how it affects those involved.





	1. It Started Like Most Bad Things Do: With Ninjas

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, this work is going to be a bit more of a serious and potentially upsetting one, but I've elected not to tag some of the upsetting parts so that the plot isn't spoiled. Trigger warnings will be listed in the end notes of each chapter, so if you're worried about that please, please, please read them.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine shots are fired, all nine of their adversaries are dead, and ten bodies are pouring blood out onto the linoleum floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is going up unbeta'd, but that might change later :^)
> 
> Trigger warnings at end! Please check them if you're worried content may upset you!

It starts off like most nights with the three of them do; there’s a crime that needs to be solved, or in Wade’s words, a criminal who needs their ass kicked. It ends like a surprisingly high number of nights with Matt do: ninjas. Unlike most nights with ninjas, however, their opponents seem surprisingly well prepared to deal with three vigilantes. The ninjas manage to take them all by complete surprise (apparently ninjas are one of the few groups who can hide themselves from even Matt), so the odds happen to be stacked against them this time.

"Daredevil!" Peter hears himself shrieking just as he sees one of the men tangled in a fight with Matt push the sword he's wielding through the body armor and into Matt's abdomen. The sheer horror he's experiencing is amplified a hundredfold as he sees light reflecting off the harsh silver of the blade that's been run through Matt completely before it's violently twisted and yanked back out, then a thousandfold as the other man’s sword plunges into Matt's chest and executes the same maneuver.

It's taking everything Peter has to hold off the men surrounding him and running to help Matt is completely off the table unless he wants to risk being impaled as well. Clearly, these guys have weapons sharp enough to get through the armor that Melvin makes.

Before he can forsake his own personal safety, there's a series of deafening cracks as Wade drops his katana in exchange for the gun holstered at his thigh. First the man getting ready to jam his sword back into Matt hits the floor, followed almost instantly by the man two feet to his left. Then it's the four surrounding Peter, and finally Wade deals with his own, first shooting the two that have their swords currently driven through his body and then the final one preparing to follow in his comrades' footsteps.

Nine shots are fired, all nine of their adversaries are dead, and ten bodies are pouring blood out onto the linoleum floor.

Before Peter even registers his feet moving, he's kneeling at Matt's side and pressing his hands uselessly to Matt's chest in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

Matt's choking up blood and making these horrible gurgling sounds which Peter realizes with mounting panic are the man insisting he's okay even as he's bleeding out.

"Get his suit off!" Wade's shouting as he runs across the building lobby towards them.

Peter fumbles at the side of Matt's suit for a zipper he knows exists until Wade slides down on his knees and shoves Peter's hands out of the way to yank the hidden zipper down. He peels the armor back and... Oh.

Oh God.

Blood is _pouring_ out of Matt, never halting but coming quicker in time with each beat of his heart.

Peter puts both hands over the wound lower on Matt’s torso considering it seems to be bleeding a lot more heavily, and Wade's got one hand on Matt's neck– checking his pulse probably– as he murmurs repeatedly that it's okay while digging desperately for something in the pockets of his belt.

He finds it after just a few seconds that feel as though they stretch out to minutes and pulls out a lighter. Wade drops the lighter on Matt's entirely blood-soaked chest so that he can rip one glove off with his teeth and flick the flame to life.

He hastily wipes away blood that's immediately replaced before lowering the fire to the gaping wound in Matt's chest.

The first coherent sound Matt makes is a scream of pain as the blood around the lighter boils on his body and his split skin is melted shut.

Wade's hand has moved from Matt's neck to his jaw where his thumb is stroking along it soothingly in time with the ‘you’ve had worse-s' and ‘suck it up, Red-s’ he's repeating over and over.

Peter pulls his hands back as Wade moves the flame to the wound he had been applying pressure to and uses the fire to seal the gash there as well.

"Get ready to flip him over," Wade says over Matt's hoarse screams, directly addressing Peter and snapping him out of his oncoming horror-induced catatonia.

Peter nods and slips his hands under Matt, the entire motion made slicker and easier by the blood coating every surface surrounding them.

Wade says, "Now!" and Peter flips Matt over to reveal where the swords had left their exit wounds. The flame is immediately put to the higher one, and as Peter presses his hands to the other wound, it only then registers that the putrid stench hanging heavy in the air is that of burning flesh and boiling blood. 

He pulls his hands out of the way again as Wade flicks the lighter back to life– the slippery blood coating his fingers causing him to have to try a few times before the flame stays long enough to seal the fourth and final hole.

Somewhere along the way, Matt passed out; whether it was from the pain or the blood loss Peter can't tell, and he can't be bothered to care until he knows what the hell comes next in trying to save Matt's life.

Wade drops the lighter and whips out his phone at the same time he tears the other glove off with his teeth so that he can use a relatively blood-free hand to scroll through the contacts and stab at one viciously.

Wade has one hand occupied with holding his phone, and when he tries to snap the fingers of his other hand, slick blood keeps it from making much of a sound. Regardless, Peter still looks up.

Peter has got his fingers pressed to Matt's jugular to assure himself that there's still a pulse there, but he manages to devote enough of a degree of his attention to Wade to hear and process what he says.

"Pick him up, follow me," Wade orders him like a soldier, his mask now yanked halfway up his face so his mouth is uncovered.

Peter flips Matt back over and slides one arm under his back and the other beneath his knees before standing up and following after Wade.

He leads them outside to where a crowd has already started to gather at a midrange distance, courtesy of the gunfire. There's an instant clamor at the appearance of the three vigilantes, and more people begin to stop and stare from an even closer distance. Peter just does his best to ignore them and presses his forehead down to Matt's, whispering to his unconscious friend that he's going to be okay. He has to adjust his hold slightly so that he isn’t putting pressure right where one of the recently sealed stab wounds is.

Whoever it was that Wade decided to call in this moment of crisis answers the phone, and Wade is instantly shouting at them.

"The Roxxon building on 56th– I need you here, now!" He pauses as the other person responds. "Because you owe me!" Wade screams down the line, losing whatever little had been left of his cool. "I saved your friend, now you save mine! Get here right now or I'll kill you when he doesn't live through this!" It’s a loud enough outburst that some of the closer bystanders hear every bit, while the further away ones only catch a few words and the tone of urgency.

With that, Wade hangs up and shoves his phone back into one of the pockets of his suit. He begins pacing, coming to a stop in front of Peter to take Matt's pulse before swearing vehemently and resuming the pacing. Somewhere within Peter, it registers that Matt's body armor is still wide open, and for a second he worries that people might take pictures or spot the identifiable scars until he remembers that every inch of Matt's torso is completely coated in a red so deep it's almost black in the late evening light.

Barely three minutes later, Peter hears a sound that's familiarity still manages to bring him some comfort, even with the circumstances.

"Listen to me," Wade says, his snapping actually making a sound this time as the dried blood crusts up and flakes off from the friction. This time it’s the sound that garners Peter's attention rather than his eyes just going to the man in a desperate search for what to do. "You're going to follow them and you're going to make sure his mask stays on."

Wade's voice is so commanding that it's all Peter can do to nod as the familiar sound crescendos, and Iron Man lands on the pavement in front of them.

"Jesus fuck, you weren’t exaggerating, Deadpool," Tony says as he steps forward to take Matt from Peter.

Peter hesitates just a fraction of a second before handing Matt off to Tony. Thankfully the man seems to have realized the gravity of the situation and takes off the second he has a solid hold on the dying vigilante.

Peter immediately shoots and web and starts swinging after them with Wade's call of 'I'll meet you there' ringing in his ears.

It's a bit hard to keep up with Tony's rocket-powered suit, but with all the adrenaline coursing through his veins, Peter somehow manages it. He hits the landing pad at the Tower hard enough that he has to roll to diffuse some of the shock, but at least this means he lands just seconds after Tony does.

The faceplate of Tony's suit retreats back to show his face as Peter runs up beside him, panting heavily.

"What happened?" Tony asks as they all but sprint through the penthouse and into an open and waiting elevator.

"Ninjas," Peter answers, his voice shaking just a bit as he reaches out to feel for Matt's pulse and reassure himself.

The elevator doors close and take them directly down to state of the art medical center of the tower.

Peter thinks he hears Mr. Stark mumble a 'what the fuck', but he's too distracted by the fact that Matt's heart hasn't beat in way too long for it to be reasonably okay.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Peter whispers, and the Spidey-sense is shrieking. “Mr. Stark, he’s—”

“I know,” Tony says just before the elevator doors open.

There’s a gurney already set up just outside the elevator and four people are surrounding it.

“His heart stopped thirty seconds ago,” Tony announces loudly as he sets Matt down on the gurney and one of the nurses grabs the defibrillator that was already there.

The doctors or nurses or EMTs—whatever they are—immediately start working on Matt, and Peter runs to stand as close as he can without getting in the way. He feels sick as he watches them press the paddles down on Matt’s chest. His body seizes with the electrical current, but his heart doesn’t start. They press the paddles down again. He seizes again. Paddles again. Peter lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as the Spidey-sense stops its incessant freakout and Matt’s heart starts back up.

One of the nurses goes to remove Matt’s mask in order to make room for the oxygen mask, but Peter steps in and puts his hand on Matt’s forehead to stop her.

“The mask stays on,” Peter says, shocked that his voice doesn’t waver. “Unless he’s going to die if you don’t take it off, it stays on.”

“Alright,” the nurse says, and Peter turns as someone touches his arm.

It’s Mr. Stark. “Go with them and tell them everything they need to know,” he says.

Peter nods and follows the people pushing the gurney into another room, out of range of the prying eyes and ears of whoever else could be in the main lobby.

“Do you know his blood type?” one of the men asks.

“A positive,” Peter says instantly, his mind dragging the answer from his subconscious to the surface as he recalls the last time he was with Matt when he’d been severely injured.

“What happened?”

“He got stabbed twice—with swords. They went all the way through, then they twisted the swords and pulled them back out. We cauterized the wounds.” He must be going into shock. That’s the only explanation for how he’s able to recite the facts so calmly when Matt was dead just a minute ago.

Within the span of less than a minute, one of the nurses has an IV in Matt’s arm hooked up to a bag of blood that’s draining rather quickly.

“When did he lose consciousness?” the man asks.

“I don’t know—it happened sometime when we were cauterizing…”

“Did he sustain any sort of head trauma?”

For once, the answer to that question is no, and Peter relays this to the medical staff as well.

He stands on the sidelines and watches as the doctors cut Matt open to sew him back up correctly rather than just burning the outside shut. Everything becomes covered in blood pretty quickly, and he loses count of just how many bags of blood have their contents put into Matt over the course of the four hours it takes for the doctors to stabilize him. They pull off the Daredevil suit and replace it with a hospital gown, but they abide by Peter’s demand that the mask stays on unless it’s a matter of life and death.

They let him tag along to the room where they place Matt in a sturdier hospital bed and begin hooking up a heart monitor and IV. It only takes a couple of minutes before they have Matt settled in completely, and Peter can finally, _ finally _ take a breath that fills his lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW:  
A character is seriously injured.


	2. Morphine and Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course, being Matt, the first thing he says after that is, “Stop th’ painkillers. I don’ need ‘em.”
> 
> Wade groans loudly in frustration. “Hate to break it to you bud, but a few hours ago you got about 40% of your liver removed and you’re down an entire organ—hope you weren’t too attached to your spleen. Not to mention the perforated lung and intestines. The drugs are staying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Echo! They're the best

Peter suddenly realizes that he isn’t sure where Wade is, but given that Mr. Stark isn’t here either, they’re probably in the same place.

“Hey, Friday?” he asks the empty air.

“Yes, Peter?” the AI answers.

“Do you know where—um, if Deadpool is here?”

“He’s upstairs with Boss.”

“Could you let him know that M—er, Daredevil is out of surgery, and maybe ask him to come here?”

“Of course, Peter. I’ll send him right down,” Friday says.

Peter sighs and sits down on one of the chairs by the edge of the bed, dragging his hands down his face. He’s shaking from the tips of his fingers to his chattering teeth, and the only thing he can smell is the blood covering him. It’s managed to seep through the material of the suit, and Peter can feel the way it’s tackiness has begun to adhere his skin to the suit as it dries slowly. Every heavy breath reminds him more of this as the rapid expansion and contraction of his lungs forces the suit towards and away from his chest.

It’s hard enough to breathe as is, so he rips off the mask and clutches it in one hand as he digs his fingers into his hair. He’s sitting hunched over, shaking and silent, when he hears the door open.

Wade’s standing there still in his full suit aside from the gloves, which were probably left at the Roxxon building, and something about that is what makes Peter lose the last hold he had on his composure.

He feels like a goddamn child as his previously only slightly watery eyes fill to the brim with tears and spill over. Matt is  _ fine _ —he’s being absolutely ridiculous, but even though he knows it, he can’t stop the tears.

Wade seems vaguely alarmed for a quarter of a second before he steps in and shuts the door behind him. He takes just a couple steps forward before he’s close enough that he can kneel down in front of the chair Peter’s in and pull him in for a hug.

“Hey, it’s okay, Pete. He’s fine,” Wade says in a sort of soothing tone. “He’s alive.”

“But he wasn’t!” Peter finally says, even though it makes the tears come faster and his throat close up.

“Wh—”

“He died, Wade! For a whole minute! I was holding him and he died and I couldn’t do anything!”

Wade leans back and puts his hands on Peter’s shoulders. Peter casts his eyes down at the ground and hunches his shoulders up as well as he can with Wade holding them.

“Hey.” Wade moves one hand off Peter’s shoulder and replaces it a second later. “Look at me, kid.”

Peter looks up and sees that Wade has pulled his mask off. He meets his eyes but can’t manage to think up a single thing to say.

“He got hurt. It happens. Maybe he got a little bit killed—that happens too. He’s gotten killed with me twice now—happened once when he was with Castle, and another time with Jess. It ain’t your fault he slipped up. He dropped his arm, one guy got the sword in and that opened up the spot for the other one. You were keepin’ four off of yourself; you couldn’t have helped if you wanted to. What matters is that you helped afterward and you made sure he didn’t stay dead. You hear me?”

“But—I didn’t help,” Peter protests. “Wade, if you hadn’t been there he would’ve died and stayed dead because I had no fucking idea what to do! Maybe I would’ve thought to cauterize it, but I wouldn’t have had any way to do that!”

“Well, now you know,” Wade says simply before sighing and dragging a hand down his face. “Fuck, kid, you think I just happened to be carrying a lighter for the hell of it? No. I’ve been in situations where I needed to do that, but I couldn’t, cause I didn’t have the proper equipment and someone died. But I learned from it, and you’ll learn too. The idiot in the hospital bed and the idiot who’s definitely listening in on this conversation—” Wade pauses to shoot a wink and a wave at one of Friday’s cameras, “majorly fucked up if neither of them taught you even basic first aid. I’m gonna make sure we get that cleared up, so if you’re ever workin’ alone with Hornhead and he decides to get himself shish-kabobbed or sautéed or somethin’ you’ll know what to do. That sound good?”

Peter lets out a shaky breath that he hadn’t intended to hold for nearly as long as he did and nods. “I—yeah. Thanks, Wade. For helping him.”

“Anytime, kiddo,” Wade says before standing up and walking over to the edge of the bed. He taps on Matt’s horns for a moment before turning back to Peter. “Hey, can you get Big Brother to give us a couple of minutes without supervision?” he asks, inclining his head toward the ceiling.

“I—maybe?” Peter says, the confusion radiating off of him. “Hey, Friday?”

“Yes, Peter?”

“Can you turn off the camera and audio monitoring for this room please?” he asks extra nicely.

“May I ask why?”

Peter looks to Wade for an answer to this.

“We need to call Daredevil’s people and tell them what happened. If Stark finds them, he finds Daredevil, and I’ll have to kill him if he does that,” Wade answers.

“Boss has approved your request,” Friday says before going silent.

“Are you sure he’s not listening?” Wade asks. “or recording?”

Peter hesitates for a moment. “No. Just—okay. You stay with him, and I’ll go somewhere and make the calls and come back. Who all should I call?”

“The other two-thirds of the three musketeers, and the group chat. Call the two, send a text to the group,” Wade answers.

“Okay, got it. I’ll be back in a little,” Peter says, patting the side of his leg to make sure his phone is still in the pocket there before standing up.

He can feel his stomach roiling as he pulls the gloves back on, the coagulated blood sticks to his skin, but he bites his lip and pushes through it to pull on the mask so he can do something to help Matt.

He heads up to the penthouse, walks straight out onto the balcony before jumping off and swinging away. There are a lot of buildings around the Tower, but Peter goes past the immediate surroundings to find a place that seems suitable for making ‘your friend was technically mortally wounded on my watch’ calls.

When he finally settles on a spot to make the calls, he pulls one glove off and does a hasty job of wiping the blood off of his hand and onto his chest—unfortunately, that just gets dried blood to flake off of the suit and stick to his hand. He feels the nausea building again but forces himself to shake it off and pull out his phone.

There’s a moment of internal debate before Peter decides to call Foggy first and then Karen—nothing against Karen, of course. Matt and Foggy just seem to be closer.

He hazards a glance at the clock on his phone which tells him it’s now well after two AM. This leads to the slightest hesitance when he finds his thumb hovering over the ‘call’ button beside Foggy’s contact, but he decides the man would rather be woken up to hear his best friend is okay rather than see the news in the morning and not know if Matt even survived.

It rings four times before Foggy’s sleep-heavy voice comes through the line.

“H’llo?” he says, slurring the greeting.

“Hi, Mr. Nelson,” Peter says because that seems like as good a place as any to start. “I just wanted to let you know that our…” How did Claire put it when she was trying to be subtle? Oh yeah, “our mutual friend is okay.”

There’s the sound of Foggy swearing under his breath accompanied by the bed shifting as he sits up. Peter swears he hears another voice in the background of the call, and that’s affirmed when he hears Foggy say, “Go back to sleep.” There’s a short break of silence followed by what sounds like a door shutting.

“What happened?” he asks, now sounding alert and incredibly anxious.

“He got stabbed. Twice. By ninjas. With swords,” Peter manages to get out, tensing up at the way Foggy’s breath catches with the reveal of each new element. “And he died for—for about a minute, but he’s okay now.”

“He got himself killed,” Foggy says, and his voice is shaking.

“But only for a minute,” Peter stresses.

“It’s still—where are you? Are you with Claire?”

“We’re at Avengers Tower—well, he and Wade are. I had to leave to call you,” he answers a bit hesitantly. “We had to get him somewhere really fast cause it was really,  _ really _ bad, and so Wade called Mr. Stark and threatened to kill him—but I went with him and made sure they left his mask on, so nobody’s seen his face.”

The deep exhale that prompts from Foggy makes Peter feel somewhat better about breaking the news of Matt being so badly hurt.

“Okay—okay, when can he get out of the Tower?” Foggy asks.

“I’m not sure,” Peter says. “Um, I’ll figure it out and get back to you, but don’t expect to see him in the office tomorrow. I gotta go now, though.”

“I—alright. Let me know if anything happens,” Foggy says. He sounds exhausted and resigned.

Peter ends the call and scrolls through his contacts once again. Before he calls Karen though, he works up a much better mental script than he’d had for the call with Foggy.

Karen picks up on the second ring with a voice that sounds tired but like she’s been awake for a while. “Karen Page,” she says.

“Hi, Ms. Page,” Peter says. “Don’t panic, he’s okay now, but our mutual friend got hurt really bad. He’s being treated at Avengers Tower, and his identity is still secret. Just don’t expect to see him at work for the next couple of days.”

There’s a moment of silence and maybe a bit of a sniffle. “He’s okay?”

“He’ll recover completely,” Peter answers, he isn’t sure if okay is really the most accurate word choice for describing Matt’s condition.

“Okay. Keep me updated,” she says.

The call ends, and Peter looks down at his phone. For the first time, he sees the number of unread text messages. Two clicks and he realizes the texts are from the group chat as well as their individual members. He goes to the group chat first since that’s where the most messages were sent.

_ 11:19 PM _

_ Frank C:  _ Has anyone heard from Peter about Matt

_ Frank C:  _ Or from Wade

_ 11:32 PM _

_ Jessica: _ what happened to matt this time?

_ Frank C:  _ Check the internet

_ Jessica: _ I know you’re not so old that you don’t realize how vague and unhelpful that is

_ Frank: _ Google him right now

_ 11:35 PM _

_ Jessica: _ holy shit

_ Jessica: _ Peter is he okay???

_ 11:41 PM _

_ Luke: _ what’s going on?

_ Jessica:  _ google him

_ 11:43 PM _

_ Luke:  _ Jesus. Is he alive?

_ Frank C: _ That’s what I’m trying to find out. Kid isn’t answering. Neither is Wilson.

_ Luke: _ Claire hasn’t heard anything either.

_ 11:47 PM _

_ Danny: _ oh shit do I need to go help Matt??

_ Jessica: _ I think it’s a little late for you to fist him back to health if he bled out.

_ Danny: _ He’s not dead. Don’t say that.

Peter glances through the rest of the notifications and sees that they’re texts from Jessica, Frank, Luke, Danny, and a number he doesn’t recognize all asking about Matt. He opens the one from the number he doesn’t have saved.

_ 12:17 AM _

_ (212)-819-7798: _ Peter this is Claire, Matt’s nurse friend.

_ (212)-819-7798:  _ is he okay? Do you need me to meet you guys somewhere?

She must’ve gotten his number from Luke.

Rather than take the time to reply individually, he opens the group back up to compose a message.

_ 2:39 AM _

_ You: _ Sorry for not answering sooner. He’s going to be okay. In very bad shape, but we got him to the tower in time. Wade’s with him right now, I’m about to head back over. Just got done calling Karen and Foggy.

_ Jessica:  _ so he didn’t die?

_ Jessica: _ that’s a relief

_ You: _ he died for about a minute. He’s okay now though.

Peter puts his phone away after making sure it’s silenced in preparation for all of the messages he’s sure are about to come flooding in. He only takes a minute or so to compose himself before swinging back to the Tower and heading inside.

Upon arriving back in the hospital room that Matt’s in, Peter pulls his mask off and then his gloves, grimacing yet again at the way the blood that soaked through them does its best to stick to him.

Wade’s sitting beside the bed, and he still has his mask off—something that Peter is just now realizing could be an issue for the man in the future.

“Deadpool—your face,” Peter says awkwardly, gesturing from Wade to one of the cameras in the room.

Wade just shrugs. “Cops already know who I am, and given how Stark feels about privacy laws, I assume he already knew too. You get in touch with everyone?”

Peter nods. “Yeah, they wanna know when he can get out of here.”

“You’ll have to ask the doctors about that the next time you see ‘em. I’m kinda shit at estimating how long it takes for a normal person to heal. But before you try and figure anything out, maybe go clean yourself up. Seriously—you’re an adorable kid, but the blood all over your face really isn’t helping.”

Peter brings a hand up to his cheek and only stops when Wade clicks his tongue at him.

“Nope, don’t do that. That’s probably how you got your warpaint on in the first place. Just go take a shower or something, and I’ll sit with him,” Wade says.

Peter hesitates for a second, and Wade must be able to see that Peter wants to protest, because he sighs and continues speaking.

“Seriously, kid. He’s probably not gonna wake up for a few more hours, and he’ll freak if the first thing he smells is that much blood on you. I’ll stay with him the whole time.”

“I—okay,” Peter relents, nodding and pulling the mask back on just for the walk to the elevator.

He passes by a few nurses who don’t even spare him a glance before getting to the elevator, where the mask once again comes off.

“Hey Friday, can you take me to the gym?” Peter asks; it’s the nearest place with showers, and given the time of day, he doubts anyone will be there.

“Boss has requested your presence first, but after that, I’ll be happy to direct you wherever you’d like,” the AI replies as the elevator begins its ascent.

It’s fine. Peter can handle a conversation with Tony. If it turns into a lecture though, there’s a fair chance he’s going to lose his shit and have a complete meltdown where he tells Tony to stick his daddy issues where the sun don’t shine again.

The elevator doors open into the penthouse with a pleasant chime, and Peter steps out cautiously. He’s a bit worried about tracking blood and general gore onto the glass, chrome, and white everything that makes up the décor.

Tony’s sitting in one of the armchairs with a glass of whiskey in hand, and he spins around to look at Peter as the elevator makes its sound. A horrified look flashes across his face as he gets up and comes to where Peter’s standing.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Peter says softly.

“You look like you just came from a Broadway production of Carrie,” Tony says, checking Peter over from a few feet away. “You alright?”

“It’s all M- Daredevil’s blood,” he says, brushing off Tony’s concern as well as he can.

“Still seems relevant to ask if you’re alright considering you’re covered in a couple of pints of your friend’s blood,” Tony replies. “So are you alright?”

Peter shrugs. “He’s gonna be okay, so I’m not freaking out anymore.”

Tony sighs and chews his lip for a second. “You saw your friend die, Peter, even if he didn’t stay dead. It’s okay if you’re not okay.”

“I don’t know how I feel,” Peter answers. “I feel exhausted. I feel kinda dizzy. I feel like I might throw up. I just had to call Daredevil’s people and tell them I almost let him die, and the only thing I can smell is blood. I just want to go home, but I won’t be able to calm down until Daredevil wakes up so I can talk to him and make sure he’s really okay.”

Tony has a look on his face that seems somewhat akin to pity, and Peter isn’t too prideful to admit it’s a look he doesn’t mind getting in this situation. “Alright. Why don’t you clean yourself up at least before you go back down and wait for Daredevil to wake up? He’ll probably freak out if he wakes up and sees you like that.” Tony gives a gesture that encompasses all of Peter as he says ‘that’. “Here, come on.”

Peter’s a little confused, but he follows behind Tony obediently through the bedroom and into a bathroom more than half the size of his and May’s apartment. Everything’s sparkling clean, white and glass and chrome, just like the rest of the penthouse. Bottles of designer perfume and cologne crowd a tray on one of the countertops, and Peter’s eyes move from there to the walk-in rainfall shower.

“Towels are in here,” Tony says, opening up a closet that Peter hadn’t noticed. “Don’t worry about getting blood on stuff, and tell Friday if you need anything. I’ll leave some clothes outside the door for you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” Peter says quietly, and Tony nods before leaving.

The door clicks shut, and Peter makes sure to lock it before heading over to the floor to ceiling mirror on one of the walls. His face is streaked all over with blood, and his hair is even matted up with it in a few places. He tosses the mask and his gloves onto the counter, grimacing slightly at the blood they leave on the white marble. His hands are covered in blood and stained red, and as he takes off the rest of the suit he realizes that his arms and torso are generally in the same condition. After kicking off the boots and leaving them in a pile on the floor with the rest of his clothes, Peter walks over to the shower and turns it on. The water is warm enough to be comfortable within a matter of seconds.

The steam that gently rises in the air only serves to amplify the smell of blood, and Peter has to close his eyes against nausea that comes from the scent and the sight of the water turning a sickly pink color. Scrubbing at his skin with the washcloth instantly turns the white terry cloth pink as well, and it doesn’t seem to be doing anything about the way the blood has stained his skin. He fumbles for a moment to turn the water temperature up, and within a few more seconds it’s hot enough to scald.

Peter scrubs his skin raw for nearly half an hour before he can’t tell if the red is from the blood, the skin irritation, or the mild burning of the water. The steam is thick enough to choke on by the time he shuts the water off and steps out, grabbing a towel to dry his hair off and then wrap loosely around his waist.

Sure enough, Tony did leave clothes outside the door for him, and Peter grabs them before retreating back into the bathroom to get dressed. It’s a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that does nothing to hide the still blood-stained skin of his arms and hands. He casts a glance over at his discarded suit and frowns at the way blood has smeared from it onto the pristine floor.

A quick look through the cabinet beneath the sink provides Peter with a roll of paper towels, some all-purpose cleaner, and a few small garbage bags. He stuffs the suit into the trash bags just to keep the blood from spreading anywhere else; the main body goes in one bag and the boots, mask, and gloves go in another. After that, he takes time to make sure the countertops, floor, and anything else he might’ve touched are clean of any blood. Maybe Wade’s paranoia is rubbing off on him, but he doesn’t like the idea of leaving enough blood around that the maid or whoever it is that cleans this place could take it and get DNA from it.

Once he’s sure everything is clean, he flushes the paper towels down the toilet— sure enough, the top of the line plumbing manages to handle it. Stuffing both of the bags containing his suit into one more trash bag for security, Peter takes it with him and heads back to the elevator. Tony isn’t anywhere in the penthouse as far as he can tell, but that’s not concerning in the slightest; the guy owns the entire skyscraper.

When he arrives back at the hospital room, Peter hears voices coming from inside. For a second he’s relieved that Matt may have woken up, but opening the door reveals that Wade and Tony are the ones talking. Matt’s still out cold, the heart monitor beeping away steadily.

“Hey, kid,” Wade says, giving Peter a little wave. “What’s in the bag?”

Peter glances down at the trash bag he’s still holding. “My suit. It kept getting blood everywhere.”

“Smart,” Wade says. “Now that you’re here, you might as well help us plan how we’re gonna get Daredevil out of here. It probably won’t be too long before the cops show up with a warrant for him and me.”

Peter frowns. He hadn’t even thought about that. “How long do we have?”

“A few hours, maybe? As soon as they can get a judge to sign off on a warrant. So maybe around 8.” Tony says, his arms crossed over his chest. “Depends on whether or not they want to arrest him at all.”

“Considering we left 9 bodies, they’re gonna want to at least ask some questions. And if they get either of us in an interrogation room, they’re gonna go ahead and arrest us for all our bullshit. I’m not letting that happen,” Wade says, and Peter cringes a bit at the mention of the men Wade killed. They really didn’t have any other option though.

“You could sneak him out through the parking garage,” Tony suggests.

“Yeah, we could call your cab guy to meet us—would he be able to do it this late?” Peter adds.

“He’s workin’ with Weasel right now, so yeah, probably,” Wade replies.

“The main problem is that he’s still in pretty bad condition. You guys are gonna need a setup like this wherever you take him,” Tony says.

“We could use the usual doctor? She might be able to handle it,” Peter says to Wade. It’s pretty hard to talk about people when he can’t use their names.

Wade shakes his head. “This is really bad. I don’t know if the usual one could keep up with it. Ask the Chi master if he can fist him back to health.”

Both Peter and Tony blanch at that.

“I’m sorry, get the who do to  _ what? _ ” Tony says.

Wade waves him off dismissively. “Minds out of the gutter you two.” And those are words that Peter never expected to hear from Deadpool. “I’m talking about the Immortal Iron Fist—you know he can heal people with that thing, right?”

Peter didn’t know that, and he doubts Tony even knows who the Immortal Iron Fist is.

“I thought he taught you all about that spiritual shit?” Wade says, sitting back a little.

“Well he showed me the glowy hand thing, but he didn’t really explain what it does,” Peter replies. Tony looks completely and utterly lost.

“Alright, just text him or call him or something and tell him to meet us at Daredevil’s place. Maybe ask the usual doctor to be there too, just to monitor him for tonight.”

Peter pulls his phone out of where he’d slipped it into the pocket of the sweatpants and casts a glance over at Tony before doing anything else. “Did you really turn off the monitoring and recording in here?” he asks.

“Yeah, I really did. I’m not actually all that interested in Daredevil’s identity. I know yours, and I know Deadpool’s, so two out of three isn’t bad.”

Peter looks over at Wade, who just gives a vague shrug and mouths, “I told you so,” at him.

He pulls out his phone and shoots off a text to Danny and Claire asking both of them to go to Matt’s place and wait there. Danny starts typing almost instantly, but before the response comes through Peter gets distracted by how the steady beeping of the heart monitor begins to speed up as Matt comes to.

Wade’s on his feet in an instant. “Stark, get out.”

Tony doesn’t move, and Wade throws Peter a pretty desperate look as Matt begins thrashing around on the bed.

“Hey, idiot, it’s me,” Wade says, pinning Matt to the bed by his shoulders to hopefully keep him from damaging himself. “Look at me—”

Peter gives Wade a strange look at that line before he realizes just why he’d wanted Tony out. He sets his hand on Tony’s shoulder and very forcibly guides him out of the room with a loud, “Sorry!” and slams the door shut.

Matt’s still flailing around, and Wade lets go of his shoulders to instead grab his wrists and hold Matt’s hands to his face, a pretty bold move, considering that Matt could very well gouge his eyes out. “Knock it off, dumbass—it’s me,” he says. “Feel the fucked up skin? No eyebrows? It’s me—now calm down.”

Matt stops doing his best to fling himself off the bed and moves his hand from Wade’s face down to the center of his chest. He looks somewhat calmer, but he’s still very clearly not okay, even if the drugs having him slurring is a little funny. “Wade? Where’re we? I can’t—did I ge’ drugged? S’anyone here?”

“We’re at Avengers Tower because  _ you _ had to go and get yourself stabbed. You’re on a fuckton of painkillers—the good kind—and the only other person in the room is Peter. Say hi, Pete.”

“Hey, Double D,” Peter says, coming up to the edge of the bed and brushing his hand over Matt’s arm to let him know where he is.

Matt’s still breathing heavily, but the heart monitor is slowing back down as he composes himself. Of course, being Matt, the first thing he says after that is, “Stop th’ painkillers. I don’ need ‘em.”

Wade groans loudly in frustration. “Hate to break it to you bud, but a few hours ago you got about 40% of your liver removed  _ and _ you’re down an entire organ—hope you weren’t too attached to your spleen. Not to mention the perforated lung and intestines. The drugs are staying.”

Matt shuts up at hearing the extent of his injuries. “I— th’ last thing I remember s’you burnin’ the hell outta me. How’d you ge’ me here in time?”

“We didn’t,” Peter snaps before Wade gets the chance to answer. “Wade had to call in a favor with Mr. Stark, and you still ended up dying. But it was just for a little bit, so that’s okay, right?”

“Peter,” Matt says gently, the visible features of his face softening. “M’alright.”

“No—no! You don’t get to say that! I had to feel your heart stop! I watched you die! There isn’t a single thing about that that’s ‘alright’!” Peter can feel his eyes stinging again, and he hates himself for it. Hasn’t he cried enough already?

“’kay, bad word choice,” Matt says apologetically. “Meant that m’alive now.”

“As if that’s any sort of metric to be judging off of in the first place! Not dead doesn’t equal okay—even by crazy person standards!”

Wade comes around to the other side of the bed and sets a hand on Peter’s shoulder, turning him away from Matt. He doesn’t know why though; it’s not as though it’ll do anything to keep Matt from listening in on the conversation.

“Listen, Pete,” Wade says, “I get it. You’re upset, and you’re scared, and you have every reason to want to yell at him until your little heart’s content, but how about you wait until after we figure out a plan to get him out of here in one piece? Because as entertaining as this is, the cops ain’t gonna stop and wait for the drama to finish unfolding before they pull at least two of us outta here in cuffs. Also, he’s high as a fucking kite. Did you see the dosage they’re giving him?”

“Fine,” Peter says, pulling away to wipe the angry tears from his face. He can seethe in silence if that’s what’ll be most beneficial.

“Alright, great. Now I’m gonna step into the hall and call Dopinder to see if he can give us a ride. You two brainstorm and figure out how we’re gonna get him out of here without anyone realizing he’s flying blind,” Wade says before heading to the door and pulling it open.

Tony is standing just on the other side of the door, one hand raised as though he was about to knock and the other holding a very obviously labeled biohazard bag.

“I thought you guys might want this,” he says, holding the bag out to Wade who looks at it suspiciously.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Daredevil’s suit. It’s pretty fucked, but I figure he can get his suit guy to fix it,” Tony says, shaking the bag in front of him a little. “So you want it?”

Wade takes the bag and mutters a quick thank you before shutting the door again rather than heading out to the hall like he had been about to. He pulls out his phone and clicks around for a couple of seconds before the sound of a phone ringing on speaker fills the room.

Matt actually flinches at the noise and hunches his shoulders up a bit, but Peter’s focused mainly on the way Wade has just dumped Matt’s bloody suit on the floor and started looking over it.

“Um, Wade,” Peter says. “What are you doing?”

“Checking for bugs,” he answers, sitting down on the floor by the suit.

“Mr. Stark wouldn’t—” Peter stops talking as soon as he remembers Baby Monitor Protocol. Mr. Stark definitely would.

“Exactly,” Wade says just before the phone stops ringing and a voice comes through the speakers.

“Hello, Pool! To what do I owe this call?” Dopinder says, cheerful as Peter’s ever heard him.

“Hey, Dopinder. I need you to come pick me and a friend up from Avengers Tower,” Wade replies as he runs his hands over the suit, ignoring the way they come back bloody.

“I can be there in half an hour,” comes the reply.

“Great, go down into the parking garage when you get here. We’ll meet you there.” Wade reaches up and presses the screen to end the call before immediately returning to his search for bugs.

Two minutes later he seems fairly certain that the suit is clean—well, that it’s not bugged at least—and puts it back in the bag.

“So, you guys figure out how to get him down the parking garage without anyone noticing?” Wade asks.

Shit. Peter forgot he was supposed to be thinking up a solution to that problem. Matt has his shoulders hunched up around his ears and his chin tucked against his chest, so, all in all, it’s not too likely he came up with a solution either.

“We could, um—use a wheelchair?” Peter suggests because really, Matt shouldn’t be walking yet, to begin with. Hell, he probably shouldn’t even be awake. How is he awake?

Wade snaps his fingers. “Pete, you’re a genius. Red, you’re a cripple.”

“Was gonna flip y’off,” Matt mumbles with his jaw clenched so hard that Peter’s worried he might break a tooth, “but I can’ really tell where you are cause ‘a whatever fuckin’ chemicals you’re pumpin’ me full of.”

Peter reaches out and takes Matt’s wrist in his hand before aiming it in Wade’s direction and lifting Matt’s middle finger. Wade puts his hand over his chest as though he’s deeply offended.

“Th’nks, Peter,” Matt slurs through slightly less gritted teeth, though it’s nowhere near approaching a smile.

“Anytime you need help insulting Wade, I’ll be there for you,” Peter says with a smile.

“Hey!” Wade exclaims despite the fact that he’s still definitely not offended.

“It goes the other way around too, don’t worry,” Peter assures, and that seems to placate Wade’s need to be dramatic for the time being.

“Alright, that’s fair. Now if you don’t mind me, I’m off to procure a wheelchair,” Wade says, getting up from the floor now that he’s satisfied that the suit hasn’t been bugged.

“Don’t start any fights,” Peter says with a smile, and Wade just waves him off before the door swings shut behind him.

Peter turns to look at Matt and realizes that even though he’s awake and talking and on a ton of the really good drugs, he still seems to be in pain. It doesn’t look like he’s torn any of his stitches—there’s no blood soaking through the hospital gown. Hospital gown. That’s another problem they’re going to have to solve before they break Matt out; he needs clothes. Back to the matter at hand though, Peter finds himself at a loss for what might be distressing Matt. It isn’t until he sees the man tucking his head against his own shoulder as if to cover his ear that it dawns on him.

“Is it too loud?” Peter asks softly.

Matt gives a jerky nod in response, hesitating for a second before he shakes his head too.

Talk about mixed signals.

“Not jus’ too loud,” Matt grits out. “Can’t tell where anything is.”

“Oh,” Peter says. “Yeah, that must be pretty disorienting. I can describe the room if you want?”

“S’not jus’ the room,” Matt says. “S’everything. Everything’s loud, but quiet too? No— not quiet… s’muffled. Like a bad speaker turned up loud. Can’t focus on any of th’ sounds. Can’t tell where anything’s at. Wade’s talkin’ t’someone, but I dunno if they’re ou’side the door or down th’ hall, n’ I can’t tell what he’s sayin’. Hear Stark arguin’ with the computer, n’ I can’t tell if he’s in th’ room with us or n’the penthouse. S’not just the sounds either. I can  _ feel _ th’ shit from th’ IV goin’ into me—or maybe m’just fuckin’ crazy so I think I c’n.”

Peter doesn’t know how to reply to that, but he tries anyway. “Well, we’ll get you out of here soon enough. And Iron Fist agreed to heal you, he’s waiting with the usual healthcare professional at your place.”

Matt shifts uncomfortably in the bed. “I don’t wanna ask him to—I know s’rough on—on his Chi… or somethin’.”

So even Matt doesn’t quite understand the details of what Danny can do. Somehow, that’s reassuring. But he might just be too drugged up to remember.

“He volunteered—at least I think he did. He said something in the group about helping you, and Jessica said if you’d bled out it was too late for him to, um, ‘fist you back to health’.” Peter can’t help the way the blush rises to his cheeks. “At first I thought maybe you were sleeping with him too and Jess was being gross, but then Wade said the same thing and explained that he can heal people. So I think it would be kind of rude of you to refuse his offer to help.”

Matt sighs and says, “I don’ fuck everyone, Peter,” just as the door opens.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Peter teases, turning to see who opened the door.

Wade’s pushing a wheelchair into the room, which is what Peter was expecting to see, but he’s joined by a nurse and Mr. Stark which is something Peter was decidedly not expecting to see.

Judging by the strange look on Mr. Stark’s face, Peter’s going to assume that he heard that.

“Could’ve fooled me too, Red,” Wade says with a smile. “Who are we welcoming to the club?”

“No one,” Matt says. “There s’no club.”

“Do people really still take you seriously considering you seem about as ready to fight as you are to get in bed with them?” Tony asks, sounding just a tad disdainful.

Matt jolts and Peter realizes that he probably hadn’t noticed Tony entering the room.

“Bold of you to assume he makes it all the way to a bed with most of them,” Wade says, coming to stand at the foot of the bed before directing his attention to Matt. “Stark’s here because he wanted to annoy you, the nurse is here to make sure you’re all set to go.”

“We should hold you for at least another two days,” the nurse says with a frown. “But since that’s not an option…” she trails off as she fiddles with the IVs and monitors at Matt’s bedside. “We’re giving you antibiotics and painkillers to take while you recover and keeping the morphine drip hooked up. Your friend told me you’re going to have someone who knows how to use an IV wherever you’re going.”

Matt nods, and the nurse finishes checking over the monitors and IVs before leaving the room.

“You’re lucky you’re alive. An inch to the left and you would’ve gotten a sword through your heart,” Tony says, watching Matt closely.

“Lucky me,” Matt deadpans, his head back on the pillow so it looks like he’s staring up at the ceiling.

Tony exhales deeply and makes the face he always makes when he’s about to admit he was wrong about something. Peter’s only seen it maybe three other times, but it’s recognizable enough with the way Tony closes his eyes and scrunches up his face.

“Look, I don’t… approve of your methods—”

“Good. Ain’t your fuckin’ job to approve of ‘nything I do,” Matt snaps, and Peter can’t help but smile just a bit at how Mr. Stark’s still managing to rile Matt up, even when he’s so out of it.

“Dammit, let me finish,” Tony snaps back, dragging a hand down his face.

Matt’s lips are pulled back in a sneer, and Peter sighs.

“Double D, please just hear him out,” he says, and Mr. Stark looks at him like he might be God-given.

“Fine,” Matt concedes irritably.

“Thank you,” Tony says. “Look, what I was saying is I don’t approve of how you do what you do, but I don’t want you to get killed doing it. So if you want I could, I don’t know—upgrade your body armor? Maybe even make you a suit or something.”

The look on Matt’s face is as though Tony has just offered to ritualistically sacrifice Spatula to Cthulu.

“The fuck do you think I am?” Matt snarls, and Peter gets the distinct impression that he may have to be restrained shortly, especially given the way the offer seems to have sobered Matt up almost instantly. “You wanna plaster your fuckin’ branding all over me—after everything you’ve advocated for? Everything you still stand for? What I do ain’t something you’ll ever be able to take credit for! I know this might come as a fuckin’ shocker t’your goddamn ego, but you bein’ ‘the first superhero’ doesn’t give you some kinda… entitlement to the rest of us! You know what? You weren’t even the first! Howard Stark made the first hero, but it certainly wasn’t you!”

Peter slaps his hand down over Matt’s mouth before he can get another word out and looks to Tony in absolute horror.

“Oh my God, Mr. Stark I’m so sorry. He’s just really, really drugged right now. I know you didn’t mean it like that. He’s usually a lot smarter, I promise—”

Mr. Stark just sighs and waves him off, even though Peter’s absolutely positive the comment about his dad had to have struck a nerve. “It’s fine, kid. At least now I know for sure where you pulled the ‘daddy issues’ card from last time we fought.”

Matt gives a vaguely irritated mumble, but it’s impossible to make out what it is he was attempting to say with Peter’s hand so firmly in place over his mouth. Peter even shoots a glare at Matt for good measure despite the fact he knows the man won’t be able to tell—it’s probably for the best, considering Peter’s face is bright red from the mention of his use of ‘daddy issues’ as an arguing point with Tony.

“I’m still sorry about it,” Peter says, looking back to Tony. “Really, he doesn’t mean it. He’s just being a drama queen.”

“It’s really okay. I can’t imagine all that many people have seen Daredevil high, so at least I can lord that over him if I ever need to,” Tony says with a shrug. “You guys need anything else before you head out?”

“We’re all good,” Wade assures from where he’s now sitting in the wheelchair.

“Alright, well, have fun,” Tony says. “Friday’s still not monitoring in here, so if you need anything, Peter has my number.” And with that, he heads out of the room, shutting the door behind himself.

Peter turns to chew Matt out for being so rude, but the second he moves his hand he realizes that Matt’s unconscious once again. He sighs and runs one hand through Matt’s hair, before glancing over to Wade when he hears the sounds of one of the cabinets opening.

Wade searches through a few different cabinets before coming over to the bed with a plain t-shirt and a pair of pants made from the same thin material as the hospital gown.

“You wanna help me get him dressed? He’s a lot heavier than he looks, and I should know. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to pick him up,” Wade says, already reaching around to untie the hospital gown that Matt is wearing.

“Sure. So long as I don’t have to hear any of the context behind you picking him up,” Peter replies; by now he knows to assume whenever Wade mentions something that  _ could _ be questionable, it usually is.

“I wouldn’t taint your poor, innocent ears like that,” Wade assures as he very carefully hauls Matt up into a sitting position to reach the ties at the back of the hospital gown.

“You’ve said way worse than that with me around,” Peter points out.

“I would never!”

“Whatever, let’s just get him dressed so he doesn’t wake up halfway through and knock the shit out of you,” Peter says, passing the shirt to Wade from where he’d set it on the bed. “Because even like this, I’m betting he could beat you.”

Wade snorts and rolls his eyes as he pulls the hospital gown off of Matt and tosses it onto the floor.

Peter’s breath catches in his throat as he gets a look at the bloody gauze taped to Matt’s chest over the two stab wounds. The one on his chest looks almost straight over his heart; the only reason it didn’t go through his heart was because it was pushed in at just enough of an angle.

Wade glances over at Peter and hurries up with putting the shirt on Matt, first putting his limp arms through the holes one at a time and then pulling it over his head. One of Matt’s arms flops over and smacks Wade hard enough to earn a quiet, “Ow.”

Once the shirt is over Matt’s head, it’s simply a matter of maneuvering it down over his torso without jostling any of injuries too badly; a feat which Wade accomplishes with surprising skill. After that, it’s onto the pants, and it quickly becomes apparent that Wade won’t be able to manage that on his own.

“Wanna lift up his leg for me?” Wade asks after he’s rolled the pants legs up like how Peter has seen women do with tights in TV shows.

“Yeah, sorry,” Peter says, stepping closer and lifting Matt’s right ankle up off the bed.

Wade pushes Matt’s foot through the leg of the pants before indicating to Peter to lift the other leg. Once both legs are somewhat in the pants, Peter takes the duty of lifting Matt up off the bed and averting his eyes as Wade gets the pants the rest of the way on.

With Matt finally dressed, Wade pulls out his phone to check it and smiles. “Looks like Dopinder’s running ahead of schedule. Says he’ll be here in about ten, so you can go on and head home.”

Peter tilts his head questioningly. “Uh, I’m going with you two.”

“Nope, sorry kid,” Wade replies with a shrug and vaguely apologetic tone. “Unless you want to put your bloody mess of a suit back on, you can’t come with. Sweet civilian Peter Parker doesn’t need to be around me when everyone’s on high alert for Deadpool and Daredevil. Whether I’m in the suit or not, cops know who I am.”

Peter wants to argue, but he gets Wade’s point. He also really, really, really can’t handle putting the suit back on. Just the thought of all that blood makes his skin crawl and his stomach verge on nausea. “I’m not gonna leave until after you two do.”

Wade shrugs. “Sounds good. Maybe you’ll be able to keep Stark from tailing us.”

“He won’t do that,” Peter says, and that one he’s positive of. Tony doesn’t care that much about Daredevil’s identity.

“Keep an eye on him anyway? Please? If not for me, then for my paranoia?” Wade says, batting his eyelashes at Peter.

Peter sighs, but gives in. “Yeah, alright.”

“You’re the greatest,” Wade replies. “Wanna get him in the wheelchair for me?”

“Can I do anything else for you while I’m at it?” Peter snarks even as he very carefully lifts Matt up and eases him down into the wheelchair, making sure he’s propped up well enough.

“Now that you mention it,” Wade says, and Peter’s quick to cut him off.

“Nope. Don’t wanna hear it,” Peter interrupts. “No thank you.”

“Jeez, I was just gonna ask you to grab his suit for me,” Wade says with a dramatic sigh. “And also get the morphine off the IV stand.”

Those are both fair enough requests, so Peter obliges. He picks up the biohazard bag containing Matt’s suit in one hand and the morphine in the other.

“We good to go?” Wade asks, pulling his mask back on.

“As far as I can tell,” Peter replies, and with that, they’re heading out.

Wade pushes Matt in the wheelchair and Peter walks alongside them, holding the IV bag of morphine high enough that it can still drip down the tubing and through the needle in Matt’s arm. It’s slow going, but they get to the elevator and eventually down to the parking garage where a familiar-looking cab is waiting.

Peter helps load Matt into the backseat of the cab, Wade electing to sit back there as well to keep an eye on Matt. Peter waves as the cab pulls away. He stands there alone in the parking garage with nothing but a wheelchair for company for a few minutes, before pushing the button for the elevator and heading back up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No trigger warnings for this chapter that aren't covered by the graphic violence tag.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please leave kudos and comments as well as checking me out over on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone where I'm always happy to talk about this verse and everything marvel. Don't be afraid to send dm's or asks! This work should be updating on Wednesdays until it's complete, so mark your calendars!


	3. A History Lesson in Who Wants to Kill You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no shortage of shops in central Manhattan, but as Peter wanders up and down the fluorescently lit aisles of a Walgreens, he realizes he has no idea what to get for Matt. A card? No—there aren’t any cards that say ‘sorry you were stabbed by cultist ninjas’ and even if there were, there certainly aren’t any that say it in Braille.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta'd by Echo! Say a big thanks in the comments!

Peter heads back up to the medical floor to collect his suit, he’d left it in the room Matt had been in. Part of him wants to just head home, but a bigger part of him wants to keep his promise to Wade and keep an eye on Mr. Stark so he can be sure that no stalking, tailing, or general spying is taking place.

He makes his way back to the elevator, and once the doors slide shut he sighs.

“Hey, Friday?”

“Yes, Peter?”

“Where’s Mr. Stark at?” he asks.

“He’s in the lab. I’ll take you there now.”

Peter leans back against the wall of the elevator and closes his eyes for the remainder of the ride up, only opening them upon hearing the soft chime that always accompanies the doors opening.

“Hey, Mr. Stark,” he says tiredly as he walks over to where he can see Tony standing in front of a hell of a lot of holograms.

Tony jolts like he’s actually a little surprised; he must’ve been pretty deep in thought if he hadn’t heard the elevator opening. “Oh, you’re still here. I thought you’d be leaving with Dumb and Dumber.”

Peter shrugs. “Deadpool didn’t want me to be seen with them just in case. And I’m not putting the suit back on, so…”

Tony nods. “Surprised that he cares so much about protecting your identity,” he says as though he’s thinking aloud.

“I mean, did you forget the whole thing where he stalked me for a week to keep me from giving myself away as Spider-Man?” Peter asks, sitting on one of the stools at a workbench near where Tony is standing. “Anyway, what’re you up to this late? Or-- technically, early I guess.”

“I’m trying to increase the efficiency of the thrusters in my suit,” Tony explains, gesturing to the schematics hovering around him. “There’s something that’s diverting a lot of power from them and I just can’t figure out what it is. I don’t think that it’s a problem with the programming, but…”

Peter zones out as Tony goes on a long speech riddled with all sorts of technobabble that he’d normally understand just fine. The problem is that he’s exhausted and probably in shock, so it all just goes straight over his head. He nods along and hums every so often to give Tony the impression that he’s listening, but in actuality, he’s reliving the events of that night.

Once they finally reach a break in Tony’s ranting and Peter’s sure it’s been more than long enough for Wade to get Matt back to his apartment, Peter finally butts in.

“That’s weird that you can’t figure it out,” he says. “And I’d offer to help you with it, but I gotta get home so May doesn’t start worrying about me. You know how she can get.”

Tony nods and glances at the time on one of the screens in front of him before grimacing. “That late already? Alright, kid-- be careful. I’ll call a cab for you, just head on downstairs.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” Peter mumbles tiredly as he stands up from the stool, grabbing the bag containing his suit which he’d set by his feet.

Peter takes the elevator back down, and by the time he gets to the ground floor his cab is already waiting out front for him. Thankfully the driver doesn’t try to chat past a cordial ‘good evening’. It isn’t until he’s more than halfway back home that he pulls out his phone to check for any news from Wade, Claire, or the rest of the group. 

He checks the group chat first, and he isn’t all that surprised by the first message.

  
  


_ 2:41 AM _

_ Jessica:  _ Motherfucker. Again?

_ 2:49 AM _

_ Frank C: _ Jones, now is one of those times where we’re supposed to show compassion.

_ Frank C: _ Peter, I’m sorry you had to go through that. Are you okay?

_ 3:03 AM _

_ Jessica:  _ whoops yeah you’re right

_ Jessica: _ sorry you had to see that. I know it’s scary as fuck and if you need to talk about it we’re here for you

_ Luke: _ yeah Peter, I’m sure that was tough. We’re all here for you.

As he’s reading through the messages, a new one arrives.

_ 3:59 AM _

_ Danny: _ hey guys, just letting you know that Matt is doing much better now. He’s wouldn’t let me heal him fully because apparently the hand/some remnant of it is the one who did this to him and he doesn’t want me to be out of commission in case they come after me. I’m gonna keep helping bit by bit over the next couple days until he’s back in fighting shape. Claire is manning the IV and other medical stuff in the meantime.

_ You: _ thanks for being able to help him so late at night.

_ Danny: _ of course! What are friends for  ＼（＾ ○ ＾）人（＾ ○ ＾）／

Peter smiles at the kaomoji and slides his phone back into his pocket. Matt’s going to be okay. He was hurt, but he’s going to be okay now—even if it will end up taking a couple of days.

When the cab pulls up outside of Peter’s apartment, he thanks the driver and gets out, being sure to bring the garbage bag containing his suit with him into the building. It takes him a couple tries to get the apartment door unlocked— despite everything working out, his hands are still shaking— but once he gets in, the lights are off and it’s obvious that May must be asleep. He silently makes his way to his bedroom, only avoiding tripping over a pair of shoes thanks to the spidey-senses.

Once inside his bedroom, the door shut and the lamp by his bed flicked on, he stares down at the garbage bag in his hand and wonders what to do with the suit. Yeah, he’s gotten blood on it before, but nothing anywhere approaching this.

He stares at the bag for another long moment before pulling out his phone and googling how to get blood out of clothes. The internet helpfully provides him with the advice to soak the article of clothing that has gotten blood on it in cold water, so Peter quietly makes his way to the bathroom where he fills the tub up with cold water and drops the suit into it, mask, gloves, and boots included.

The water almost instantly begins to gain a pinkish tinge, and Peter has to look away as the nausea returns. The website said to soak it, right? And he really doesn’t think that he can stand another second surrounded by the smell of blood and the sight of his suit, so without too much deliberation he makes the decision to head back to his room and go to sleep.

The next morning, Peter jolts awake to the sound of May screaming and it isn’t until after he’s fallen out of bed and scrambled to the source of the noise that he realizes maybe leaving his blood-soaked suit in the bathtub without warning May wasn’t the smartest idea he’s ever had.

“May—hey, I’m alright! It’s fine!” he says frantically, waving his hands wildly to try and get his aunt’s attention before she has either a heart attack or a panic attack.

“Peter, oh my God, what happened?!” May asks shrilly, running her hands over Peter’s shoulders and down his sides and tilting his head to inspect him for some sort of injury that could’ve feasibly led to the slasher-esque scene in the bathroom.

“I’m fine—it isn’t my blood,” he assures, and May gives him a look that’s horrified in an entirely different way. “I didn’t kill anyone either!” he adds on.

“Well whose blood is it?” she asks, and Peter really can’t blame her for still being so on edge.

“Um, Daredevil’s,” he answers a little awkwardly. “He got hurt pretty bad last night, but he’s okay now.”

“That’s a lot of blood, Peter. What happened?” she asks, staring down at the bathwater that’s so red it’s verging on opacity.

“He got stabbed and he almost bled out—well, he did bleed out, but he was only dead for like a minute,” Peter answers; it’s gotten to the point where reciting those facts makes him feel numb rather than nauseous, and he isn’t sure whether or not that counts as an improvement.

“He—wait, Daredevil  _ died _ ?!”

“Yeah, Deadpool says it happens sometimes. But he’s fine now,” Peter tacks on again.

“Does he need a doctor or something? I mean—I can check in on him today if he needs,” May offers.

“I think he’s alright actually—the nurse he usually uses is with him and we have another friend with um, magical healing powers? So I think he’s okay for now. I’ll let him know you could help though.”

“Magical healing—okay, sure,” May says with a certain resignation in her tone that Peter knows intimately. He used to hear it in his own voice frequently back when he wondered how the hell his life could get any weirder; now he just rolls with it.

“I’m gonna finish washing the suit now—it just needed to soak to get the blood out and I was really tired last night,” he says apologetically, kneeling down by the tub to pull the suit out of the water to look at it.

“Okay, I’m gonna go get ready for work,” May replies, kissing Peter on the top of his head before wandering off. She still sounds just slightly in shock, and Peter can’t help but feel responsible.

Turning his attention back to the suit, he figures that it’s been soaking for long enough. He reaches his hand into the bloody water to undo the drain of the tub and holds the suit, gloves, mask and boots loosely as the water drains out around them. Once the only water left in the tub is what’s steadily dripping from the suit, Peter turns the water on and runs each of the individual pieces under cold water until the water runs clear. It takes the better part of an hour, but once he’s sure that the suit isn’t still bloody, he heads to the kitchen to grab the bottle of laundry detergent that’s sitting on the counter. He isn’t about to take the suit down to the building’s laundry room—even if he wasn’t afraid of being caught, he’s not sure the suit is machine washable as is—so he just takes the detergent back to the bathroom and refills the tub, adding the detergent into the water. He swishes the suit around in it for a while, and once the last bits of blood seem to have come free from the suit, he wrings it out as best he can and hangs it over the bar the shower curtain is on to let it dry the rest of the way.

With that task finally accomplished, Peter washes his hands and heads back to his room to check his phone for any news from Matt or the rest of the group. The group chat is unfortunately barren, but Peter doesn’t really want to bother Danny, Claire, or Matt by texting them in case they’re busy or asleep. Lord knows he hopes that Matt is asleep.

With that sorted, Peter clicks back to his home screen before opening Instagram to check what his friends are up to. The posts are the usual selfies and pictures of food that pop up on his feed after a Friday night as well as the typical posts from celebrities and artists he follows. It isn’t until after the first fifty or so posts that he comes across something that breaks the flow of normalcy.

It’s a post from one of his favorite accounts—a meme account focused on the various heroes and vigilantes of New York. If any of the vigilantes do anything particularly stupid then it ends up immortalized on the account in the form of a series of memes, the ones that immediately come to mind being the ones about Daredevil driving and that one time Peter himself ran out of webs and smacked face-first into an office building. One of the people inside had gotten a picture of Spider-Man stuck to the window, and it didn’t take long for the internet to draw comparisons between him and an insect on a windshield. Enough about that though, because this one isn’t a meme.

It’s a picture, unmistakably from last night, of Spider-Man holding a bloody and shirtless Daredevil. Peter remembers the exact moment depicted in the image; he had his forehead pressed to Matt’s and was saying that it would be okay, even though his friend was unconscious and more than half dead.

The caption, however, is what really catches Peter’s attention.

**spiderfan ** I know I’m a meme account and you guys come here for funny stuff, but whatever went down last night seems like it was really bad and I felt like I should talk about it. I know that they all get hurt a lot, but this seemed way worse than usual. Also, you guys definitely owe me a ‘we told you so’. I get your DMs all the time talking about spidey sightings/interactions and after this pic went viral last night I’m finally inclined to believe what you’ve been saying. I wish Daredevil the best of luck with his recovery, and in his relationship with Spidey  ♡♡♡♡!

Peter reads over the caption about six times, but there’s no way he’s misinterpreting it: the spiderfan meme account, and apparently plenty of their followers, think that he’s in a relationship with Daredevil

He actually, legitimately laughs out loud at how ridiculous the idea is. Him and Matt? In a relationship? He sends the post to Ned along with the message ‘lmao look at the caption’.

Ned replies with a series of keysmashes and it’s only a few seconds before a comprehensible message comes through.

_ n.leeds01:  _ Is Daredevil okay?????!?!?

_ _

Whoops. Peter should’ve mentioned that sooner.

_ You:  _ yeah he’s fine he got stabbed but it all worked out. Did you read the caption?

_ n.leeds01: _ nah I panicked 1 sec

_ n.leeds01: _ his RELATIONSHIP?!?!?!

_ You: _ ikr lmao

_ n.leeds01:  _ lololol those poor suckers will ship anything

Peter’s glad to know that he isn’t the only one who finds it completely ridiculous. Sure, the person who made the post in no way knows who he is or who Matt is, but still, the idea of Spider-Man and Daredevil being in a relationship is crazy. He’s seen the supermarket tabloids claiming any two celebrities who are seen talking to each other are sleeping together though, so it really shouldn’t be that much of a shock that the same sorts of things will end up happening to him. He is, after all, a celebrity of sorts.

Peter goes back to his feed and quickly notices something that he hadn’t caught earlier. There’s a comment on the post.

**backinaflash ** smh spider-man could do so much better.

Peter doesn’t full on laugh at that one, but it still earns a huff of air out of his nose. Flash complimenting him is so bizarre—even if the guy doesn’t know who’s beneath the mask he’s fanboying over.

Just then, a message comes through that makes Peter’s heart soar.

_ 11:03AM _

_ Matt: _ Hey everyone. Sorry for worrying you I’m okay now. Like Danny said he’s working with Claire to fix me up and I should be back to normal in a few days.

_ Jessica: _ thank god. We were worried about you dumbass. Not sure what we’d do if you ended up dead.

_ Matt: _ Well then you owe your eternal gratitude to Peter and Wade for saving my ass

_ Danny: _ Matt go to sleep!!!! I left like two minutes ago why are you awake!!

_ Matt: _ You woke me up when you shut the door and I got Claire to get me off the painkillers

Peter smiles at the messages and locks his phone. When he was badly hurt while working with Matt, Matt visited him and even brought gifts. Maybe it’s time to return the favor.

After getting dressed, Peter finds himself heading for the subway station so he can head over to Manhattan. He’d rather buy Matt flowers or whatever after he’s already had to cram himself onto the claustrophobic transportation system from hell.

As it is, almost every time he’s ever been on it, the subway is barely tolerable. It smells terrible, the lights keep flickering, and at one stop a guy with a guitar gets in and plays Wonderwall by Oasis for the entire 25 minutes he’s on the subway. It’s more miserable than usual, and when they finally pull up to Peter’s stop he practically sprints off.

There is no shortage of shops in central Manhattan, but as Peter wanders up and down the fluorescently lit aisles of a Walgreens, he realizes he has no idea what to get for Matt. Candy and chocolate maybe? No—Matt’s always complaining about how he can’t eat pre-packaged things because of how gross the dye and preservatives and everything taste. A card? No—there aren’t any cards that say ‘sorry you were stabbed by cultist ninjas’ and even if there were, there certainly aren’t any that say it in Braille. Flowers then, maybe. There are a few sad-looking roses in a plastic vase by the cash register, but even Peter can smell that they’re close to rotting, so he decides to pass up on those and look for an actual florist.

Google helpfully informs him that there’s one about five minutes away—in the direction of Matt’s apartment and everything. The shop is a quaint brick building with a dark green awning over the door. A bell rings as he walks in, and the older man standing behind the cash register smiles up at him.

“Hi—welcome! Do you need help finding anything?” he asks cheerfully.

“I’m just looking for some flowers for a friend—” Peter starts before cutting himself off because would Matt even appreciate flowers? With how sensitive his sense of smell is, having something super fragrant in his apartment might make him miserable or just drive him crazy, and who knows if he’d decide to keep them just to be nice to Peter. “Um, maybe something that doesn’t smell very strong.”

“Any preference about color?” the man asks as he comes out from behind the counter to look through some of the flowers lining the walls of the shop.

“No- not really. He’s blind, so I don’t think that it really matters,” Peter answers.

The man makes a humming sound and looks around for a minute before pulling a few blue flowers out of the water they’ve been sitting in.

“Hydrangeas are hypoallergenic,” he says. “So if that’s what you were worrying about, these will be good.”

“Yeah—that sounds great,” Peter says.

He pays for the flowers before resuming his commute towards Matt’s apartment, bouquet in hand. He can’t smell them at all, so that bodes well for Matt being able to tolerate them. While he’s walking, a scent does manage to catch his nose though; some expensive, hipster coffee shop that smells absolutely divine.

Peter comes to a stop outside it and thinks for a moment. While Wade’s energy booster of choice is cocaine, Matt drinks coffee at a rate that can’t be healthy. He spends all day at his office and a good portion of each night fighting crime—honestly, it’s a miracle if he manages to get more than four hours of sleep every night. Peter can’t recall ever seeing him at his office and him not guzzling coffee like his life depends on it. This gift seems a lot more like something Matt would actually appreciate, and it’s not like Peter ever spends money on much else, so he leaves the shop with two bags of fancy coffee beans.

He makes it the rest of the way to Matt’s apartment with only a single stop to pet a cute dog, and when he arrives, he heads into the building and up the stairs. He knocks on the door softly, and after a moment it opens to reveal Karen on the other side, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt as opposed to the pencil skirts and nice blouses she tends to wear at the office.

“Oh—hey Peter,” she says, sounding a little bit surprised.

“Hi, Ms. Page,” Peter says with a little wave. “I wanted to come and check on Matt. Y’know, work on convincing myself that he’s alive.”

He means for it to come across as a joke, but Karen seems to see through the thin veneer of humor plastered over a very real concern of his.

“Come on in. I’m not sure if he’s awake right now, but you can hang out until he is,” she offers, opening the door wider and gesturing for him to come in.

Peter has very rarely been inside Matt’s apartment during the day, and when he’s there at night it’s usually only for a few minutes or the lights are off, so he really lets himself take in how the place looks.

It’s pretty bare; the furniture is something he’s noticed before, but the shelves truly are barren of any sort of decoration. There’s maybe one item that shows some semblance of character, and that’s the carpeted cat tree placed against one of the windows on the far wall. It’s clearly been scratched up and shed on, and there’s a colorful throw blanket wadded up and shoved onto one of the tiers. There are a couple of cat toys in a cardboard box on the floor beside it, but other than that the most exciting thing in the place is Matt’s braille printer. And yeah, being blind does explain to some degree why the place is so truly lacking in decoration, but it doesn’t seem that wild to think that Matt might have, like, a houseplant or something. Maybe something to remind him of his family, even if he can’t look at it?

Claire is sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee, and Danny’s sitting across from her on the floor drinking tea. They’re both looking up at him, Danny with his usual smile while Claire looks a bit more like she’s waiting for Peter to break. A closer look shows that Danny’s smile appears more strained than normal though.

“Hey, Peter,” Danny says, lacking all of his usual enthusiasm.

“Hi, Peter,” Claire says gently.

“Hey guys,” he says, coming to stand awkwardly by them with his flowers and fancy coffee still in hand. “How are you?”

“Tired,” Claire says. “But I’m doing alright. How’re you?”

Peter shrugs. “I needed to see that Matt was okay.”

“He’s asleep now, but when he wakes up I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

Danny looks like the small talk is killing him, and as soon as Claire finishes her sentence he chimes in.

“Can you tell me what happened last night? Wade wasn’t the most helpful with the details of it all, and Matt’s been pretty out of it.”

Peter’s a little surprised by the request, but he assumes Danny wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.

“Um, yeah. What do you need to know?” he asks, setting the gifts down on the table before taking a seat on the floor with Danny.

“What did the ninjas look like?” he asks, sitting forward towards Peter.

“They uh—they wore all black?” he says, because really, how does one describe ninjas other than just saying ‘ninja’. But it’s important so he tries. “And they had katanas. They didn’t say anything or make any noise at all—Matt didn’t even know they were in the building until they were on top of us.”

Danny swears under his breath. “If you saw them again, would you recognize them?”

“They’re all dead,” Peter says, just in case Wade didn’t remember to communicate that point.

“But they might not stay dead. So would you recognize them?” he asks, and Peter has no idea how to answer.

“Danny,” Claire says gently. “If they’re dead, then they’re going to stay dead. Even if this was the Hand, they don’t have any dragon bones left.”

“We don’t know that—” Danny argues. “We never found the Black Sky’s body, and she could’ve taken some with her when she escaped Midland Circle!”

Peter is so completely lost. He’s heard Danny mention the Hand before, but dragon bones? Black Sky? And wasn’t Midland Circle that building that collapsed after the earthquakes?

“They never found her body because a thirty-story building fell on top of her,” Karen reminds in a soothing tone as she sits on the couch beside Claire. “She hasn’t made contact since, and besides, didn’t you say she turned on the Hand at the end?”

“If Matt could survive it, then certainly the Black Sk—”

Peter feels the spidey-sense tingle just slightly, and he whips around just in time to see Matt leaning most of his weight on the wall beside the door to the bedroom.

“Her name is Elektra,” he says firmly, and Danny looks thoroughly chastised.

Claire just looks pissed off. “What’re you doing up?” she says in a tone that is in no way, shape, or form anything other than a threat as she gets up and walks over to where Matt is standing.

“I heard Peter,” he says before giving in to the hand Claire has resting on his shoulder and heading back to his bed.

“You can come in here if you want to talk to him, Peter,” she says, and Peter gets up to follow into the bedroom.

Claire is helping Matt sit back down on the bed, and Peter watches from a few feet away, unsure if he’d be more of a help or a hindrance in this scenario. Once Matt is laying down and propped up on a tower of pillows, Peter finally comes closer. He notices Spatula sleeping curled up under a lump of blankets near the pillows.

It’s a bit weird to see Matt without either the glasses or the mask on—his eyes are almost always covered, and he’s able to do so much that sometimes Peter manages to forget that he’s blind, but it’s impossible for Peter not to notice now. His head tracks Claire’s movement as she leaves the bedroom and slides the door shut behind herself, but his eyes remain pointed unseeingly at the far wall.

“Hey, Matt,” Peter says softly.

“Hey, Peter,” Matt replies. “Thanks. For last night, I mean.”

“You’ve basically done the same thing for me,” he says with the faintest of smiles. “Besides, Wade did most of the work. I just flipped you over and carried you.”

“You helped save my life,” Matt says simply.

“Yeah, I mean, I guess I did,” Peter finally concedes, sitting at the foot of Matt’s bed.

Matt looks—well, no—considers him for a moment. “Go ahead.”

“What?”

“I can tell you want to ask about what Danny was talking about.”

“Which power tipped you off to that one?” Peter asks curiously, because yeah, he had really wanted to ask.

“My knowledge of teenage curiosity.” Matt offers him a slight smile. “So, go ahead.”

“Okay—what was literally all of that about? Like, I have so many questions, so can you please just… start from the top? Because if I’m getting in fights with the Hand, then I should probably know more about them, right?”

Matt nods. “Yeah, you should know. So, the Hand is an ancient organization that used a certain ritual to bring back members from the dead. This ritual involved the use of dragon bones because, insanely enough, yes, dragons are real. Danny has fought one and he’ll tell you all about it if you ask.”

Peter needs a minute to process the fact that dragons are actually real. He’s pretty sure Danny mentioned that one too, but Peter’s also pretty sure that his brain set that information off to the side to be processed later and then just never got back around to it. Never mind Peter’s mini-crisis of science, because Matt’s still plowing through his explanation.

“They also believed that there was a person—the one they called the Black Sky—who would win them the war against the Chaste. The Chaste is an organization that fought the Hand. The monks of K’un-Lun also fought the Hand, and those are the people who trained Danny. The Hand massacred everyone in K’un-Lun while Danny was away, so he has a pretty considerable grudge against them. My mentor was a member of the Chaste, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the Hand thought that Elektra Natchios was the Black Sky, but they killed her while they were trying to kill me. I thought she was dead.”

Matt has to stop talking for a second, and Peter isn’t sure if he should offer some comfort or something, but before he can decide Matt’s speaking again.

“But they brought her back. They used the last of the serum used in the ritual to bring people back to life to bring her back, and then they decided to use her to try and get the last of the dragon bones which were located under Midland Circle. The earthquakes a couple years ago were caused by them trying to get the bones—anyway, Elektra killed the leaders of the Hand, and in order to keep all of New York from being destroyed we had to destroy Midland Circle. It just so happened that Elektra and I were both still under it when the building collapsed. I made it out. She didn’t. We thought the Hand would end with all their leaders dead, but there are splinter cells and factions left—like the ones that came after us last night. They wanted me dead, and I’m sorry I dragged you and Wade into it.” Matt looks incredibly apologetic, and for some reason that makes Peter furious.

“Don’t apologize for them coming after me. If you’d been out alone, then you would’ve died for sure. I’m glad I was there—you’ve never put me in danger. I put myself in danger the second I chose to put on the mask,” Peter says. And he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t blame Matt at all, and he’d do it again without hesitation.

“Thanks Peter,” Matt says softly. “Any questions I didn’t answer?”

Peter thinks for a moment, and there is one question. “Who is Elektra Natchios?”

Matt stills at that, and Peter wonders if Matt avoided answering that part for a reason. Nevertheless, he answers.

“She was trained by the same man as me, for the same purpose. He wanted us both to fight the Hand, but he gave up on me. Years after he— he quit training me, he sent her to try and drag me into the fight anyway. It didn’t work. We went our separate ways until a couple years ago when she came back and asked for my help in dealing with who I thought was the Yakuza but ended up being the Hand. She took a knife meant for me, and she died in my arms,” Matt explains, and his voice is a lot rawer than it had been for the rest of the explanation.

“Is she… is she the one you lost?” Peter asks quietly, jolting a little at the bitter laugh that prompts from Matt.

“Yeah. She was.”

Peter isn’t quite sure how to respond to that one, so he just goes with, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Matt nods, his head aimed in Peter’s direction but his eyes downcast toward the bed he’s lying on. “Thanks. It was… it was hard. It took time to heal. I mean, I didn’t really expect that I’d survive that fight.”

That’s a red flag if Peter’s ever heard one in his goddamn life. They had a lesson once in health class about warning signs that your peers may be struggling with mental illness, and that’s, with some relevant adjustments, a textbook example of depressed or even suicidal indications.

“Do you… do you have someone you can talk to when things are hard?” Peter asks softly. “Like a therapist or something?”

Matt shrugs. “Therapists might tell the cops. I used to go to Father Lantom but… he’s dead now too. I guess I have Sister Maggie now.”

Peter gets the sinking feeling that his question may have made Matt feel a lot worse. “I—that’s good. That you have someone.”

“Yeah,” Matt says quietly but doesn’t add anything else on.

“Well, I just wanted to drop by and convince myself that you were still alive,” Peter says awkwardly. “I’ll let you get back to resting now. Get better soon, okay?”

“I will, Peter,” Matt says.

Peter’s already halfway to the bedroom door when he remembers one more thing he wanted to ask.

“Hey, do you want me to take your suit to Melvin for repairs?” he asks.

Matt shakes his head. “No, it’s alright. It’s about time to retire that suit anyway.”

Peter feels his heart drop, and Matt must catch that somehow.

“No—not like that.  _ I’m _ not retiring. Just… a bad guy posing as Daredevil killed a lot of people —including Father Lantom— in a suit identical to mine. I stopped using it for a while, but it was too dangerous to be in my Devil of Hell’s Kitchen costume, so I went back to the Daredevil suit. Melvin’s almost done with my new one, so I’ll just wait until it’s done to go back out.”

Peter’s so incredibly relieved to hear that Matt isn’t giving up on the whole Daredevil thing. With that heart attack averted, he offers Matt a smile.

“I hope this suit is as cool as the last one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no trigger warnings for this chapter
> 
> don't forget to leave comments and kudos to show that you loved it! as always, check me out over on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone. I reply to every ask I get.


	4. Suit Yourselves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re back!” Peter says as if that wasn’t obvious already.
> 
> “I’m back,” Matt agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check end notes for trigger warnings. Beta'd by the lovely incredible amazing Echo as always.

Once Peter arrives back at his apartment, he heads up to his room and collapses on his bed. Matt trusts him now—that much is apparent. Well, he knows that Matt has trusted him with his life for quite some time, but now Matt trusts him with his past as well. Peter recognizes that it isn’t easy to talk about the things that got people like them to the point they’re at now. He’s never even  _ really _ told Matt about Ben.

Peter’s trying to sort through the complicated surge of emotions—elation that Matt trusts him so much, relief that at least one of the heroes he works with treats him like an adult, sorrow for everything Matt has had to go through, worry about how long it’ll take Matt to recover. Matt’s recovery time—that prompts an even less pleasant realization. It’s very much public knowledge that Daredevil was severely injured, so everyone knows he’s going to be out of commission for at least a little while, including the bad guys. Matt trusts Peter with his life and his past, so Peter’s going to assume that trust extends to letting him patrol Hell’s Kitchen while Matt is bedridden.

Peter glances at the time and groans before forcing himself out of bed. It’s already almost six o’clock, so he better start getting ready to head out if he wants to make it back to Matt’s neighborhood by sundown. When he heads into the bathroom to check on how dry his suit is, Peter unfortunately finds that it’s still damp enough that it’ll chafe like a bitch if he tries to put it on, but being the high school honor student that he is, he comes up with a solution.

It says a lot about their family dynamic that when May comes home to see Peter sitting on the living room floor with one hand aiming her hairdryer at his superhero suit and the other hand shoveling cereal straight from the box into his mouth, she just stares for a moment before shaking her head and heading into the kitchen.

“You want me to make you something to eat other than dry cereal?” she calls over the noise of the hairdryer.

“No thanks! I gotta head out in just a minute!” Peter calls back as he sets his hand on the suit to check whether or not it’s dry enough yet.

The boots, mask, and gloves are all sitting in front of or on top of air vents to try and get them dry as well. The suit is still a little damp, but it’s dry in all the parts of the body that bend, which is what really matters. He flicks the hairdryer off and unplugs it before heading to his room and stripping down to pull on the body of the suit. Putting on wet clothes is never pleasant, but at least the residual heat from the hairdryer makes it a bit more bearable.

With the main part of the suit on, Peter takes a second to glance at the time and swears vehemently under his breath when he realizes just how close to seven it is. He goes running through the apartment, sliding around corners in his socks as he collects the various other pieces of the suit and pulls them on. He’s got on one glove, one boot, and his mask halfway on and sideways when May looks up from the mail she had been reading through.

“You in a rush?” she asks with clear amusement.

“Yeah—I gotta head over to Hell’s Kitchen,” he explains breathlessly as he plops down on the floor to pull his other boot on.

“Weren’t you just there earlier to see Daredevil?” May asks curiously, leaning back against the counter and setting down what is definitely a stack of bills.

“Yeah, but I gotta go look after the neighborhood while he’s recovering,” Peter explains as he tugs on a (thankfully dry) glove.

“Ah. Why the rush though?” she asks.

“Cause it’s all over the news that Daredevil got hurt really bad, so all the bad guys he normally deals with are gonna be doing their bad guy stuff as soon as possible—which is usually right when it gets dark,” he explains, twisting the mask around the right way before pulling it down and doing up the zipper at the back of the neck. He makes sure the web-shooters are secure before standing up and tossing a quick, “Bye, May!” over his shoulder as he runs for his bedroom window.

“Not so fast,” May says, and Peter stops in his tracks, turning around to face her and tilt his head in confusion. “Give me a hug before you go,” she adds.

Peter bounces over to his aunt and pulls her into a tight hug, letting her hold onto him for just a minute.

“When’d you get so much taller than me, huh?” she asks softly, rubbing small circles onto his back.

“May,” Peter says softly, “I gotta go.”

“I know, baby,” she replies quietly. She holds onto him for a moment longer before pulling back. “Be safe, alright? I don’t want to see you bloody and shirtless on the news.”

So  _ that’s _ what all the clinging is about—Peter really should’ve realized that sooner.

“I promise I’ll run away if the crazy cult ninjas come after me,” he agrees solemnly, and May gives him a weak smile in response.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” She stands on her toes to kiss Peter’s forehead through the mask before taking a step back.

Peter gives her a smile of his own, not that she can see it, before heading into his bedroom and then out into the darkening city.

He swings his way to Hell’s Kitchen, only stopping once along the way to chase some asshole drunks away from a stray cat they were throwing rocks at. He tries to check on the cat, but it just hisses at him and runs (not that he can blame it). With that sorted, he resumes his swinging and doesn’t stop until he gets to a rooftop he recognizes from the nights when he and Matt run out of bad guys to catch and do parkour races instead.

Despite having enhanced senses of his own, Peter’s hearing has  _ nothing _ on Matt’s, so rather than wait on one rooftop like a gargoyle waiting for the right sound to call out to him he does the same as he does back home in Queens which is swinging around and looking for anyone who needs help.

For a long time, Peter was pretty sure that was the dividing measure that landed him just the right side of hero while the others have one or both feet firmly placed in vigilantism; he still looked for people to help, while the others looked for people to fight. He wouldn’t quite call it a point of pride, but he knew that it separated him from the others- at least up until he did start going out looking for people to stop. Sure, sometimes in the course of curbing organized crime he helps one or two people immediately, but for the most part, it consists of beating people up and leaving them for the cops. It absolutely does help people, but there’s a difference between saving someone who’s being mugged at knifepoint and stopping someone from pushing heroin around the corner from a civic center.

Peter’s swinging around in a grid-like pattern through Hell’s Kitchen gets him results a lot quicker than even he expected when he sees a guy working his way down a line of parked cars and breaking into each one of them.

That one’s easy enough to stop, and Peter leaves him webbed to one of the cars for a police officer to find before heading along his way. From then on, things only get worse.

He was right in assuming word being out about Daredevil being temporarily out of commission (presumed dead by some) would lead to the bad guys swarming, because by the time midnight rolls around he’s stopped nearly a dozen muggings and half as many attempted rapes.

The last girl he helped got pushed around a bit before Peter managed to swing in and land a steel-toed boot in the guy’s shoulder, and she ended up getting a pretty nasty cut on her shin. Peter can already tell it’s going to require stitches and probably a tetanus shot as well.

“Hey,” he says softly, being sure to leave a few feet of distance between himself and the girl. “I’m really sorry you got hurt. Metro-General is like a block away. Do you know how to get there?”

The girl shakes her head and clamps her hand down over the cut. She’s got on a lot of eyeliner, and by now most of it is running down her cheeks. Peter’s suddenly struck with the realization that he knows her—she was in his world history class last semester.

She was always pretty intimidating—not afraid to speak up and point out when the teacher was being bigoted about something. What was her name? Peter can’t quite put his finger on it, but it certainly takes a second for his brain to be able to equate that girl with the one crying on the concrete in front of him.

“Do you want me to walk with you?” he offers, kneeling down to try and be less intimidating.

She nods but doesn’t say anything as she struggles to get to her feet in the high heels she’s wearing.

Peter takes a step forward and offers a hand to her which she very reluctantly takes to help her off the ground. As she takes the first step she winces with pain, and Peter feels incredibly sorry for her because that cut really is nasty.

“Here,” he offers, “put your arm around me to keep your weight off that leg.”

She hesitates again but does it, and Peter takes more than half of her weight, not that he can really even feel it.

He doesn’t try and strike up a conversation as they walk, but eventually the girl—Lila! That’s her name—speaks.

“Kinda weird running into you here,” she says, sniffling a little and trying to conceal it. “I’m from Queens—figured if I ever got rescued by you it’d be there.”

“Ah, well Daredevil got hurt, so I’m just looking after the place until he gets better,” Peter replies.

“Thanks,” Lila says softly. “I—really. Thanks for doing this.”

“Of course,” Peter replies. “I am your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man after all. Even when you’re not in the neighborhood.”

There’s a break in the conversation, and for a few moments, the only noises filling the air around them are the sounds of Lila’s heels clicking against the pavement and her sniffling.

“There’s a guy who was in one of my classes last year who said he knew you,” she says softly after just a little longer, and Peter tenses up.

Shit, even when he’d recognized her he hadn’t even thought to try and disguise his voice. If she recognizes it then he’s screwed. But talking to her is clearly serving as a good distraction judging by the way she isn’t actively crying anymore, and since she hasn’t recognized it yet he figures it’ll be okay.

“I know a lot of people,” Peter says awkwardly, because he doesn’t want to make himself seem like a liar or make Spider-Man seem like his best friend, because that could lead to all sorts of issues.

“His name’s Peter. Really quiet, super sweet,” she says.

“Oh—yeah I know him,” Peter says. “I met him through Tony Stark.”

Thankfully they’re coming up outside the emergency room entrance at this point in the conversation, and Peter can avoid any further discussion of the topic by opening the door and helping Lila inside.

The waiting room is about as crowded as could be reasonably expected for a night in Hell’s Kitchen, and more than a few of the people sitting in the chairs look up to see who the newcomers are. There are a few murmurs that spread through the room when people realize that the red-costumed weirdo amongst them isn’t Daredevil but Spider-Man instead.

Peter ignores them and walks with Lila up to the front desk to make sure she gets signed in before helping her over to a chair. Once she’s sat down, Peter takes a couple steps back.

“I gotta go now. Get better soon,” he says.

“Thanks, Spider-Man,” she says softly. “I’ll see you around.”

Peter smiles at her through the mask before turning to head out. He’s almost out the door when a nurse stops him.

“Hey,” she says quietly, “is Daredevil really dead?”

“What? No—no he just got hurt. He’ll be fine,” Peter assures immediately.

The nurse looks relieved, and something about that makes Peter happy. He’s used to hearing horror stories about Daredevil from the nurses that May works with, but it seems like even though he terrifies them, they still care about him. He’s noticed that’s a pretty common reaction when it comes to Daredevil.

People  _ want _ to meet heroes like the Avengers and Spider-Man, and even Luke Cage depending on the political climate at the moment, but they don’t want to meet Daredevil. Peter wonders if maybe that’s because of the circumstances that led rise to Daredevil as well as his truly terrifying aesthetic. Daredevil was born of necessity—even if Peter doesn’t know Matt’s exact origin story for putting on the mask, he knows that much. He said he got tired of listening to all the bad shit happening around him, and he decided to do something about it. This isn’t to say that the world didn’t need the Avengers when aliens came to Earth, but it has come out that the Avengers had been planned long before Loki and the Chitauri ever set their sights on New York. Peter can admit that the cops in Queens, while still not great, do a hell of a lot better than the cops in Hell’s Kitchen do—or at least did before Daredevil began his iron fist rule of the neighborhood—so Spider-Man was slightly less needed than Daredevil. The people of Hell’s Kitchen love Daredevil, but they also fear him. Peter’s both glad he doesn’t have that sort of effect on people and a little bit disappointed that he isn’t taken as seriously.

“I’m uh, gonna go. People to save, bad guys to stop—you get the gist,” he says, awkwardly pointing his thumb over his shoulder before turning and heading out.

Over the course of the night, he stops about 6 more would-be muggings, a car theft, and a fight outside of a bar. Something he notices crime and time again is that the people he saves are  _ worried _ about Daredevil. Almost all of them ask him for reassurance that their local hero isn’t dead, and Peter wonders if maybe he was wrong about the fear thing. Maybe they just don’t want to get in Daredevil’s way—they want him to be able to save as many people as possible.

Peter feels like he’s about to collapse from exhaustion around three in the morning, and he still has to swing all the way back home, so he says goodnight to Hell’s Kitchen. When he gets back home and showers away the sweat and dirt that comes with the territory of being a vigilante, he starts to worry that he didn’t do a good enough job. He’s sure there’s still crime happening all over the Kitchen, and he left Queens unattended. Peter wonders how Matt manages to stay functioning. The guy works a nine to five job and then runs around the city beating the hell out of people for another eight hours— and even when he does finally turn in for the night it’s to the sound of the crimes that he isn’t there to stop. That must be hell.

Peter’s worries go to the back of his mind as he crawls into bed and tries to maneuver himself around the cat in his bed. While he never really named the cat on purpose, it did acquire a name: Him. “Did you feed him?” and “Where is he?” eventually became “Did you feed Him?” and “Where is Him?”. Peter thinks it’s kinda cute, and the cat doesn’t really answer to anything to begin with. All things considered, Him could’ve gotten a worse name. As he contorts his body around Him, Peter strokes the cat gently and tries to let his worries slip away.

As much as he wants to sleep in, Peter’s alarm goes off bright at early at nine-thirty. Granted, that isn’t all that early—at least, it wouldn’t be all that early had he gone to bed any time prior to four AM. It pains him deep in his soul, but it’s getting to be the time of year that he actually has to get serious about doing the summer readings and other work that was assigned to him at the end of the previous school year. Back to school season is just around the corner, and as much as Peter is looking forward to hanging out with his friends every day, he’s going to miss hanging out with his other friends—Matt and Wade and Ms. Jones—as frequently.

Peter’s next few days are a mad scramble—he wakes up early enough to put a dent in his schoolwork, before heading over to Matt’s place to keep him company while Danny’s out tracking down the Hand, and all of his other grown-up friends are at work. Wade’s there a couple times, and Mr. Castle is there once, but other than those times Peter finds himself reading a book for school while Matt looks through some files that either Karen or Foggy sent to him or sleeps curled up on his couch. Matt tucks his sweatpants into his socks, and it’s pretty unreasonably adorable considering he’s a grown man who could probably have killed anyone he’s come into contact within at least the past five years if he’d really wanted to. After bothering Matt for at least an hour, Peter heads back to Queens and does the whole Spider-Man song and dance. He stops crime, takes selfies, and gets gifted bizarre things by the random citizens he helps. To date his favorite things he’s gotten are a four leafed clover from a small child and a piece of quartz from a girl who told him he’d need to cleanse his energy after all the ass-kicking he does. Once he’s been the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man for a few hours, it’s back over to Hell’s Kitchen to do his rounds as temporary replacement vigilante Spider-Man.

Working in Hell’s Kitchen is, to put it mildly, hell. Peter has absolutely no idea how Matt has done this day in and day out for literal  _ years _ . Peter busts one guy for selling drugs one night, and the very next day he busts him for selling guns. It’s frustrating as fuck, but that isn’t really what makes it hell. It’s the violence that does that.

Peter should’ve known what he was getting into after what happened with Lila the first night he covered for Matt, but somehow he still managed to naively assume that was a fluke—that he wouldn’t run into something that bad again. He was wrong. Every night there are beatings. There are shootings. There are attempted rapes. There are worse when he doesn’t get there soon enough because he can’t hear the whole Kitchen like Matt can.

It isn’t until his fourth night that he hears something soon enough that it counts.

Peter’s swinging around looking for a crime to stop when he hears something different from usual. It isn’t gunfire or screaming; it’s laughter and music. He figures it’s probably pretty pointless to go and check it out—but what can he say? He’s curious.

He lands on a rooftop across the street from the noise and sees a group of teenagers—around his age, maybe a little older—sitting on the steps outside of an apartment building. One of them has a cheap little Bluetooth speaker playing music. He can see from here that they’re passing around a bottle of Fireball as well as a vape that, judging from the smell, has a pretty potent dab cart in it. Neither of those things are legal, especially for people their age, but Peter doesn’t see any harm in it, so he gets ready to swing away.

Just as he raises his wrist to shoot out a web to the next building, Peter gets a sinking feeling deep in his bones. It’s not the prickly tingling he gets when something’s about to go a little wrong—it’s not the gut-churning shrieking he feels when someone’s about to pull a gun on him. This is something Peter can only equate to what he felt before Ben— No, not quite. What could possibly equate to that?

He looks around desperately for anything that could be the source of the feeling—is a building about to collapse? Are more earthquakes about to ravage Manhattan? Are aliens going to pour from a portal in the sky?

Peter can’t tell what’s going to happen—there’s nobody on the street except for the teenagers just having fun on their front steps, well, there’s a car coming down the street, but it’s going pretty slow so it’s not like it’s going to hit anyone so—Oh. It’s a police cruiser.

It’s a police cruiser coming to a stop just in front of where the teenagers are. The teenagers are freaking out and doing their best to hide the vape and the open containers under their sweatshirts and such and turning the music down, and the cops are getting out of the car, and the kids are still desperately trying to hide things and one of them is shoving the vape into the waistband of his jeans and the cops are drawing their guns and—

Peter doesn’t even realize he’s moving until he’s on the street between the cops and the kids who  _ aren’t hurting anyone _ . There’s a loud crack, and Peter actually steps back in shock at the noise. There’s a metallic clang as the casing of a bullet hits the ground, and Peter looks down to see a bullet embedded in one of the plates of his suit, just above his heart. The thing is, Peter isn’t freaking out about the fact that he just got shot and would be absolutely, totally, dead if not for Melvin’s suit. He’s freaking out for an entirely different reason.

“What are you doing?!” he shrieks at the cops. “They’re kids! What the fuck is wrong with you?! You were gonna shoot them over some weed and a bottle of shitty whiskey?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

The cops look shocked, as do the kids, and heads have started to peek out of windows and doors in the few seconds since the shot rang out.

“You were going to kill them without saying a word to them! They’re kids—fuck—it wouldn’t matter if they were grown-ass adults—what part of serve and protect does shooting unarmed children fall under?! I should break every bone in your fucking bodies—both of you!”

“You should,” says a voice from above.

Peter jerks his head in the direction that it came from.

There, in all his gravelly, shadowy, terrifying glory is Daredevil. Peter knew Matt was getting a new suit, but this is different from what he’d expected.

At first glance, the suit itself is pitch black, from the tip of the horns all the way to the scary-ass boots that definitely give Matt an extra inch or so of height. As Peter takes a closer look though, he notices that the gloves are actually a very, very dark crimson at the fingertips that fades up into the black—same for the toe of the boots. Rather than the textured material and sewn together armored pieces of the old suit, this one is smooth with an almost silky sheen to it. The gradient of the gloves, boots, and, as Peter’s now noticing, horns along with the new texture all make the thing seem classier. Instead of the utilitarian belt on the old suit, this one is pitch black and perfectly smooth with the metal closures so dark they’re nearly impossible to see in the low lighting. The holster on Matt’s thigh where his magical multi-tool batons go is composed of the same leather as the belt. Shockingly enough, the word that comes to mind as Peter continues to stare at the suit, is elegant.

Before Matt’s feet can touch the ground as he swings down from the fire escape, the cops are already back in their car and flooring it out of there—but not before Peter can memorize the license plate number. Why can’t  _ he _ inspire that kind of fear in bad people, dammit?

Seeing Matt standing alive and well in front of him make his jealousy of the man’s persona snap out of existence. Matt’s back, and Peter is starting to realize that an inch and a half to the right and the bullet would’ve gone straight through the suit. Peter partly wants to gush over Matt’s new suit and partly wants to panic because  _ holy shit he just got shot _ —so his brain merges the two things by having him run and all but tackle Matt in a hug.

Surprisingly Matt manages to stay on his feet even with the incredibly forceful hug, only stumbling back a foot or so at the initial impact.

“You’re back!” Peter says as if that wasn’t obvious already, though he doesn’t release his vice-like hold on Matt.

“I’m back,” Matt agrees.

The hug doesn’t seem to be making Matt uncomfortable, despite the way Peter’s feet are off the ground and all his weight is placed on Matt. Do the new boots have lifts in them? Matt wasn’t  _ that _ much taller than him last week.

After a minute, Matt sorta spins them around and sets him back on the ground. He runs his hands down Peter’s chest, and Peter’s confused as all hell until he hears Matt tapping against the bullet now imbedded in the armored plate of the suit.

“You’re going to need to get that fixed before you go out again,” he says.

“Oh—yeah. I mean, I figured it was better I catch it than one of them,” Peter replies, nodding over his shoulder to where the group of teenagers are comforting each other and being comforted by a couple of older women who must have come out of the building sometime in the past minute or so.

Matt nods. “I agree.” Before saying anything else, he steps in closer to Peter and lowers his head to speak directly into his ear. “Since you’re already in the area, you might as well take it to Melvin tonight. That’s a quick enough fix, and I know he’s in the shop right now. Said hi on my way over here.”

Peter smiles behind the mask and nods. “Alright, if you’re sure you can handle this by yourself.”

“Actually, I’d like to get that bullet from you before you leave,” Matt says. “Brett might need it to run ballistics and figure out exactly who that was that just tried to gun down children in the street.”

Peter taps the bullet in his armor thoughtfully before turning to the rather large crowd of bystanders. “Any of you got some tweezers or something?”

One of the girls rummages around in her purse for a moment before pulling out a miniature pair of bright blue tweezers which she holds out in offering to Peter.

“You mind pulling it out for me?” he asks. “I don’t think I’ll be too good with fine motor skills in these gloves.”

“Yeah—I… yeah,” the girl says, standing up and very carefully using the tweezers to work the bullet out of the suit.

When she gets it out, Peter holds out his hand for her to drop it into. With the bullet in hand, he returns to Matt’s side and offers it to him.

“Think I’ll get a jar too if I keep getting shot?” he asks with an audible grin.

Matt snorts as he takes the bullet from Peter. “It has to actually break the skin to earn a place in the jar. If those weren’t the rules then Frank would be winning with how many bullets end up in his vests.”

Karen probably wouldn’t be too happy to hear that Matt and Mr. Castle consider the jars a competition—and that the person who gets  _ more _ shrapnel pulled out of them is the one winning.

“Ah, in that case, sorry that we didn’t take the katanas to put in the jars, but we were a bit preoccupied with keeping you alive at the time.”

“I think I’ll be able to forgive you,” Matt replies with a faint smile. “Now go get that—” he taps Peter’s chest, “fixed. I’ve got things covered here.”

Peter nods, but he’s hesitant to leave Matt alone. “You sure?”

Matt sighs, but he still has a smile on his face. “Yes, I’m sure. Now get outta here.”

“Say hi to Detective Mahoney for me,” Peter says with a smile of his own before turning and heading swinging out.

He doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to get from where he is to Melvin’s workshop, but he  _ does _ know how to get to Matt’s apartment. From Matt’s apartment, he makes it to Melvin’s with only a couple of wrong turns and a slight delay from stopping a mugging.

Peter knocks on the door because he doesn’t want to scare Melvin—the dude’s huge and constantly surrounded by sharp and blunt objects alike. Peter likes his kneecaps functioning, thank you very much.

After a minute, the door opens up the reveal Melvin wearing an apron and heavy gloves with a welding mask flipped up.

“Spider-Man!” he says, like he’s actually excited to see Peter. “Come on in, kid.”

“Hi, Melvin,” Peter says with a smile. “How are you?”

“I’m doin’ great. What’s up?” he replies, pulling the mask off and setting it on one of the many workbenches in the place.

“Well, good news first, I saw Matt’s new suit and it looks awesome—seriously, it’s incredible,” Peter says, noting the way Melvin preens just a little under the attention. “But the bad news is I got shot, and Matt told me to come get the suit fixed while I was in the area. But if you’re busy, I can come back some other time—” Melvin’s such a nice guy and he’s done so much for Peter that he really doesn’t want to inconvenience him at all.

Melvin’s already waving him off. “Nah, Spidey you’re all good. I can take a look at it now and see if it’ll be an easy fix. Where’d you get shot?”

“Right here,” Peter says, tapping the armored panel on the left side of his chest just between two bits of the raised metal webbing.

Melvin looks for just a second before heading deeper into the workshop. Peter trails along behind him out of curiosity all the way to a sort of storage closet. There are large bins stacked on shelves, and Melvin pulls one labeled “SM” down from where it had been sitting beside an identical bin labeled “DD”. He roots around in it for a second before pulling out a red armored panel identical to the one that just got damaged.

“Like to make a few extra of these pieces when I’m makin’ the suits,” Melvin explains. “That way I can do quick fixes. Learned that after Matt got stabbed about the, I dunno, hundredth time?”

Peter snorts softly. “He does seem to do that a lot.”

“Used to happen even more before you and the other guys started hanging around him so much,” Melvin says. “This is a little awkward, but mind taking the suit off? I can have it ready to go in twenty minutes.”

Peter never thought he’d be standing in his underwear in a garage in Hell’s Kitchen learning the finer aspects of textile manufacturing for illicit superhero armor, but here he is.

“So, I get how the bulletproof plates like that,” Peter nods to where Melvin is using a seam ripper to remove the damaged panel from the suit, “work. But how does Matt’s new suit work? Is it still bulletproof?” The panel comes loose finally, and Peter’s a bit surprised to see that the metal webbing is still attached to the suit rather than the panel.

“It’s more bulletproof than yours, actually,” Melvin says. “One of my guys got me some high, high tech stuff, yeah? Carbon nanotube fiber. Bullets  _ bounce _ offa it. Blended it with a few layers of silk and did all the fun stuff, and bam. Masterpiece.”

Huh. That’s pretty interesting. At least he was right about the silky sheen to it.

“Did you put lifts in the boots? I swear he’s taller.”

Melvin snorts. “Mighta made them a bit taller. He needs to be intimidating—he looks like a kid next to Deadpool, and now that they’re hangin’ out all the time I thought I might try and put him on level ground with the guy.”

“Matt would have an aneurysm if he ever heard you say that,” Peter says although he’s committing the quote to memory so he can send it to Wade as soon as he gets back to his phone—he wishes Wade was here in person to hear it.

“Good thing he’s probably not in hearing range. Though with him, you never really know. I love the guy, but he’s damn freaky.”

Peter no longer wishes that Wade was here because he in no way, shape, or form wants to know how Wade would respond to that comment.

“Alright—I’ve got it fixed,” Melvin announces as he pulls Peter’s suit away from the sewing machine to look over it one last time. The panel is back in, and the webbing and spider emblem both appear to be fixed securely to it once again. “Try not to get shot again, but if you do try and get hit in the right part of the armor.”

“I think I’ll go with option one of trying not to get shot at all,” Peter replies as he takes the suit from Melvin and starts pulling it back on. “Thank you though—you’re a lifesaver. Literally. Also, I know magicians don’t share their secrets, but how is all the metal attached to the suit? I thought it was sewn on.”

Melvin grabs a sewing needle off of the table in front of him and sets it against the suit. It sticks.

“The red panels are magnetized,” he answers. “Easiest way I could figure to stick ‘em all together.”

“Oh, that’s—that’s really smart. Thanks—for explaining. And for making it in the first place.” Magnets. How did Peter not realize that?

“Just doin’ my part to help. Matt looks out for me and Betsy, so I figured I oughta look out for his people too.”

“Who’s Betsy?” Peter asks curiously as he yanks the zipper of the suit up.

Melvin shakes his head. “I’m not supposed to talk about her.”

Oookay? Well, maybe it isn’t as weird as it sounds. Maybe Melvin’s girlfriend or whoever doesn’t want him mentioning her with his extra-legal patrons.

“Alright, well tell her I said hi. And have a nice night,” Peter replies. “Thanks again for doing this tonight.”

“Of course—I keep my friends safe,” Melvin replies with a smile before going back to the blowtorch he must’ve been working with before Peter arrived.

Peter’s heart melts a little. Melvin considers him a  _ friend. _ Not a client, not one of the weird vigilantes who come to him for incredibly skilled labor without paying. A friend.

He makes it back across the river to Queens quick enough, and from there it isn’t far to home. The lights in the living room are still on when he crawls back through his bedroom window which means May is still up, so he goes to get out of the suit as quick as possible so he can let her worry over him more if she needs to.

He toes off the boots at the same time he pulls the mask off, followed soon after by the gloves. When he goes to take the suit itself off, Peter quickly realizes that the zipper is stuck. A few minutes of uselessly pulling at it and Peter gives up before heading into the living room.

“Hey May?” he says.

May looks up from where she’s reading a book on the couch and smiles at Peter.

“Yeah?”

“Um, the zipper is kinda stuck. Can you help me with it?” he asks awkwardly.

May smiles and definitely holds back a laugh before getting up from the couch.

“Of course I can. I’m a master at it by this point—all the cheap dresses made sure of that,” May says, coming to Peter’s side and prompting him to move his arm out of the way so she can fiddle with the zipper.

“Thanks,” he says, smiling down at her. When  _ did _ he get so much taller than her?

“So, I can’t help but notice you’re back earlier than usual. Anything interesting happen?” May asks, turning to grab a tube of lip balm from the bowl of assorted junk on the coffee table.

“Yeah!” Peter says excitedly. “Daredevil came back—Iron Fist finally finished healing him, and M—uh—suit guy finished making his new suit, so he’s back!”

“That’s great,” May says, more subdued than Peter but still cheerful as she rubs lip balm on the zipper track. “What’s the new suit like?”

“Oh man, it’s  _ awesome _ . It’s almost all black, and it’s like, silky and dark red on the tips of the boots and the gloves and the horns and it fades—ugh. Suit guy is an  _ artist _ . It deflects bullets, May. It doesn’t just stop them from going through, it  _ deflects _ them.”

“Oh, that sounds neat,” May says, but it’s pretty obvious that the majority of her attention is focused on the zipper. It finally pulls loose with an “ah-ha!” from May as she steps back and dusts her hands off for show.

“You  _ really  _ got that stuck. There was a whole chunk of the suit between the zipper and the track.” she says, setting the lip balm back in the bowl.

“I guess I put it back on too fast,” Peter replies sheepishly.

May looks at him a little funny, but it’s only for a second.

“Alright, well I’m gonna go to bed—I have to go to work early. I just wanted to stay up and make sure that you got home safe and sound. Gimme a hug.”

Peter lets May pull him into a tight hug for as long as she wants this time which ends up being just over a minute. She kisses him on the forehead when she pulls back, and Peter closes his eyes against the light pressure. It makes him feel a bit childish, but he’s glad that May is physically affectionate—he knows a lot of people’s parents aren’t.

“Goodnight, May,” Peter says with a smile.

“Night, sweetie. Sleep well,” she replies.

“I will.”

It’s not a lie—Peter sleeps incredibly well until around nine the next morning when the incessant buzzing of his phone just inches away from his head wakes him up.

Peter fumbles blindly for his phone, jabbing at the screen randomly before holding it up to his ear.

“Mm, h’llo?” he mutters, without even bothering to check the caller ID.

“Dude!!!” Ned’s voice practically yells down the phone, causing Peter to yank the phone just a little way further from his ear. “Daredevil’s new suit!”

“Yeah—s’great. Saw it last night,” Peter says tiredly as he sits up and stretches, his back cracking in a very satisfying ripple.

“And you made me wait to find out about it all on my own?!” Ned gasps.

“I was too busy getting shot by the police,” Peter says.

“ _ What?! _ ”

“It’s fine—the bullet didn’t even get through the armor,” Peter explains.

“Ugh, dude. Your life is so exciting—no wonder you don’t have time for your guy in the chair anymore,” Ned says almost wistfully.

“Oh come on, man. I have time for you. I’ve just been busy with Daredevil this week since he got hurt,” Peter replies as he gets out of bed. “Do you wanna hang out today now that he’s better and I don’t have to look after Hell’s Kitchen too?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Ned replies.

“When do you wanna meet up?” Peter asks as he pulls on his jeans from the day before.

“Um, how about now?”

There’s a knock on the door.

The two of them end up going out to get breakfast because Peter’s hungry and he ate all of the cereal earlier in the week when he was blow-drying his suit, and May hasn’t had a chance to go to the store since then.

As much as Peter loves MJ, it’s really nice to just hang out with Ned for once. In fact, it’s nice to just hang out with someone his age in general. Matt and Wade and Danny and Ms. Jones are all great, but they’re adults (even if they don’t always act like it) and it can be kinda hard to relate to them with their day jobs and drinking problems, even if he can relate to the superhero stuff.

After breakfast the two of them head back to Peter’s place to play videogames and pretend to do some of the summer work they were assigned—it’s not their fault that it’s just  _ so _ hard to focus on pre-calculus when Overwatch is so much more fun.

“So,” Ned says, not looking up from the screen, “are you gonna get a new suit?”

“No,” Peter replies immediately. “I mean—well, I have been meaning to get around to customizing the suit a little more. And working on a new version of the webshooters.”

“You should do that,” Ned replies. “It’d be kinda neat for you and Daredevil to still be a little bit matchy.”

Peter snorts. “Like those couples at school who wear matching outfits? No thanks.”

But Peter does consider it. He loves his suit, but it could absolutely be improved upon. The armor is much better than his first homemade suit, and it’s even more protective than the suit that Tony made for him. But it could be improved upon, especially in terms of technology. Peter really does miss the high-tech aspects of the Stark suit. Sure, he isn’t exactly looking to get AI back, but having different functions for his webshooters would be incredibly useful. That’s one of the things that he liked best about that suit, and it’s something he’s missed for a while.

Later that night, after Ned has gone back home and Peter’s sitting in his room reading over the instructions for some of his American history summer work, he decides he's going to make his suit well and truly  _ his _ .

The first thing Peter decides to get working on is the tech because that’s something he can do himself. Peter knows virtually nothing about the realm of supersuit textiles, but he’s pretty damn good with technology.

The best place to work on this sort of thing is inarguably Avengers Tower, so that’s where Peter goes the next morning, his current webshooters and the original ones tucked into his backpack. The lab is unoccupied when he arrives with no sign of Tony anywhere, so Peter just sits down and gets to work.

The first thing to figure out is just  _ how _ technologically advanced this needs to be. The Stark suit was incredibly advanced—it had freakin’ artificial intelligence. Peter knows he does need to go that hard, but is there a way to do this that’s solely mechanical and doesn’t require any sort of additional circuitry?

After a lot of fiddling around and drawing up designs, Peter finally thinks that he’s found a way. The web fluid shoots out of a small aperture on the part of the mechanism that lies on his wrist. Changing the shape of that aperture could change how the webs come out and give him the ability to shoot something other than long, thin webs. But how would he change the aperture easily and without looking? It’s not exactly like he has time to search for the right setting in the middle of a fight. More fiddling and doodling and thinking about aspects of other people’s suits, and Peter thinks he’s got it: a dial that rests around the center button of the webshooters. Just spin it to get it to the right setting, no need to look if he adds some sort of textural element which shouldn’t be too hard to feel considering the gloves are thin enough to use with touchscreens. So a dial that changes the size and shape of the aperture that the fluid shoots out of. That’s simple enough.

Peter spends the first day building a new base pair of webshooters, so that he can still use his current ones for Spider-Manning in the time it takes him to completely finish the new pair.

The second day he spends solely on building the apertures of the new shooters. It gives him a hell of a time setting it up, and he references a truly unprecedented number of camera lenses to even begin to figure it out. By the end of day two, he has one fairly promising aperture, and he also realizes that the reason he hasn’t seen Tony is because he’s out of the country doing clean energy work in France and pissing off politicians by bad-mouthing them on live television.

Day three and Peter hits a wall. He has the dial built, but he just can’t get it to change the shape of the aperture correctly. It always ends up weird and uneven or not activating the entirety of what it was supposed to change.

On day four, Peter’s mumbling all sorts of swear words under his breath as he continues his attempts to get the damn dial working when he hears,

“Damn kid, Daredevil teach you how to talk like that?”

Peter spins around in the wheely chair he’s already been sitting in for four hours and sees Tony staring at him with an eyebrow raised.

“No—high school taught me how to talk like that,” Peter replies before remembering to tack on a quick “Welcome back!”

“Thanks, kid,” Tony says before coming closer to look at what it is Peter’s doing. “Whatcha working on?”

“Trying to get my webshooters to be fancy,” Peter explains, setting down the awl he was definitely not using for its intended purpose.

“In what way?”

“I want them to be able to shoot webs that aren’t just straight ropes—like how my old suit could. I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I thought I had it but the cables just keep getting tangled and making everything uneven and just—ugh,” Peter explains, thumping his head down on the workbench.

Tony pulls up a chair beside Peter and sits down. “Why don’t you walk me through what you’ve got so far?” he suggests.

Peter explains what he has so far and how he got to that point, showing Tony a lot of the pictures he took of the different steps along the way so he’ll be able to make sure that he gets the matching shooter identical to the first one.

After listening to the full explanation, Tony finally speaks up.

“Okay, so what are the problems you’re dealing with?”

Peter grabs the awl to use as a pointer, tracing the mechanisms of the shooter in the air above it as he explains. “The cables keep getting tangled up with each other and opening the aperture unevenly.”

“Alright. And what would stop the cables from getting tangled?” Tony asks.

Peter knows that Tony must have a solution to the problem, but he isn’t saying it outright and that’s something Peter really appreciates. In the past Tony probably would’ve just said “Well why didn’t you just do x instead?” but now he’s trying to help Peter figure out a solution on his own.

“Having a way to keep them separate from each other,” Peter says.

“That would work, but how about something simpler?”

Peter chews his lip in thought for a moment. “I mean… they wouldn’t be able to get tangled if there was just one cable.”

The smile that puts on Tony’s face lets Peter know he’s on the right track.

“And if there was only one cable then I wouldn’t have to deal with the cables pulling differently on the aperture based on what position the dial is in and making them uneven,” Peter continues.

“Exactly. Now what sort of mechanism could work like that? You’ve got one cable, a round track, and a lot of different settings,” Tony says.

Peter thinks again for a moment before it clicks. “Like the gears on a bike!”

“Exactly!” Tony says, and he seems genuinely excited and proud in equal measures. “So try building it like that.”

“I will—thank you so much, Tony,” Peter says. “I’ve been struggling for  _ days _ .”

“I didn’t do anything—you just needed someone to bounce ideas off of,” Tony replies. “Unfortunately it seems like Daredevil can’t do that.

“But he can treat me like an adult,” Peter replies. 

By the end of the day, Peter has one fully functioning webshooter, and by the end of the next day he has two.

With the new, fancy webshooters fully functioning, it’s time for Peter to tackle the next aspect of customizing his suit: the actual suit.

He put this part off because he really doesn’t want to bother Melvin. The guy has already done so much for him for absolutely zero reason other than him being friends with Matt, so bothering him more about the suit when he clearly has other stuff he’s working on is just not something Peter wants to do.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize he knows someone else who made their own kickass supersuit.

“Hey Wade?” Peter asks after they’ve finished beating the hell out of some human traffickers and Matt has run off to go find get Detective Mahoney.

Matt’s been much more cautious about which officers he allows near crimes he stops since what happened the night of his return.

“Yeah, Spidey?” Wade responds.

“Could you help me make some adjustments to my suit? I want to customize it but I don’t know where to start and I don’t want to bother Melvin.”

“Sure thing—bring it by my place tomorrow sometime. Does six-ish work for you?”

“Yeah—that sounds great. Thanks, Wade!” Peter replies with a bright smile behind the mask.

The next day around six, Peter knocks on Wade’s apartment door, his suit shoved into the backpack that’s slung over his shoulder.

Wade answers the door with a dramatic flourish.

“Petey! Come on in, kiddo!” he says, opening the door wider and ushering Peter in.

The apartment is still filled with the same odd collection of slightly burned knickknacks and tchotchke as the last time Peter was there, although this time it doesn’t smell  _ quite _ as much like burnt plastic. There’s a sewing machine set up on the coffee table in the living room, and Wade gestures for Peter to follow him over to it.

“Although I am a  _ master _ seamstress,” Wade is saying, “I don’t exactly have to worry about the armored aspect of my suit. I mean, I get shot, so what? The hole’s gone in less than a minute. Because of that, I figured that this could be useful.”

Wade pulls a roll of incredibly familiar black fabric out from behind one of the chairs in his living room and presents it to Peter.

“Is that what Matt’s new suit is made out of?” Peter asks, reaching out to touch the silky fabric.

“It is indeed! I thought it could come in hand for your thing, so I asked Melvin if he had any extra I could use. The man’s an angel, I swear,” Wade answers as he flits around the living room picking up various different things and collecting them on the coffee table, including a random handful of shell casings.

“So,” Wade says as he plops down beside Peter on the floor. “Ow— wow, I’m too old to sit on the floor—anyway, so, what’re we doing to the suit?”

“I’m not really sure,” Peter replies honestly. “I just wanted to switch things up a little.”

“Alright, alright. That’s understandable. What are you thinking?” Wade asks.

“Maybe something a little more intimidating. I don’t want to be as scary as Matt, but sometimes the number of people who want to talk to me makes doing the whole Spider-Man thing hard,” Peter replies.

“Well, you’re red and blue all over, and children love primary colors so that could be factor,” Wade offers helpfully. “I’m a pretty big of the red and black color scheme—as are a lot of heroes. Me, Daredevil, Daredevil’s dead girlfriend, Black Widow. Technically, the Winter Soldier, if the red star on his arm was big enough to count.”

“So we could overlay the blue parts with the black fabric from Melvin,” Peter suggests.

“Sounds great!”

Peter is over at Wade’s until well after three in the morning removing every blue panel, covering it with the silky black and sewing it back into the suit, but when they’re finished it’s definitely worth it. Peter actually puts the suit on and swings back home instead of taking the subway because he’s so eager to wear it.

By the time he wakes up in the morning an Instagram account by the name of spidey-spotter has already uploaded pictures of him in his new suit. The comments are absolutely full of people comparing the adjustments of his suit to Daredevil’s new suit, and Peter smiles at them. Matt’s new suit was pretty polarizing at first with a lot of people who absolutely adored it, and a lot of people who absolutely despised it because of how different it is to the one they’ve been so familiar with for years. Eventually, people managed to come to the realization that maybe Daredevil wasn’t too happy wearing a suit identical to one that a serial killer pretending to be him wore, and the discourse died down for the most part. Thankfully most everybody seems to be fairly accepting of the changes to his own suit, even if there are a few people who are vocal about how much they miss the blue.

A couple of nights later, Peter finds himself in Hell’s Kitchen working with Matt to instill the proper amount of fear in the police that if they fuck up, Daredevil will come for them. This is accomplished by silently following officers out on patrol, and one or the other of them being there every time an officer confronts someone. It’s difficult and exhausting, but all of the police officers seem to be very well behaved by the end of the night.

“So, I hear you made some changes to your suit,” Matt says as they’re walking along a rooftop, looking for people who need help or cops who need to be reminded that they aren’t at the top of the food chain in Hell’s Kitchen. “And that you look more like me for it.”

Peter smiles sheepishly. “I mean. I’ve got more red on me than you do, but—” He stops walking and reaches out to grab Matt’s hand, pulling his glove off and bringing Matt’s hand to his side to feel the material that covers where the blue once was, “I might’ve taken a little inspiration from you.”

Matt smiles when he touches the material. “Looks like we’re still matching.”

“Looks like we are,” Peter agrees, looking up at Matt. “Except I didn’t put lifts in my shoes.”

Matt laughs at that and playfully shoves Peter, taking his glove back and pulling it back on. “That’s it— you’re outta here. Leave my city and never come back.”

“Hell’s Kitchen is a neighborhood, not a city. I don’t recall ever seeing you doing your devil thing up in Harlem,” Peter continues. “But I am going to leave—only because it’s late and I have stuff I need to do tomorrow.”

“Alright, Spidey. Stay safe,” Matt says.

“I will. Night, Double-D,” Peter replies before turning and swinging off of the roof.

He makes it back to Queens without any trouble and without coming across any crimes to stop. It’s a Tuesday night, so there aren’t exactly a ton of rowdy people out drinking. Once he’s back home—back in his apartment—he strips off the suit and carefully tucks it away in its hiding place in the closet before going to take a shower. After his usual routine of showering and inhaling whatever food he finds in the kitchen with only the light from the open refrigerator to guide him, Peter clambers into bed and falls asleep easily.

Peter wakes up to the sound of his aunt’s voice.

“Peter,” she says, and there’s a sort of cold, barely masked fury in her voice that brings his foggy brain to full consciousness almost immediately. “Do you have something you want to tell me?” she tacks on once it’s obvious that he’s awake.

“I—” Did he do something? He hasn’t worked with Frank in a while, so it can’t be that. And she already knows about him getting shot by the cops in Hell’s Kitchen the week before. “I don’t think so,” he says.

“Then tell me,” May says, handing her phone to Peter, “what the hell this is.”

Peter has to blink a couple times to focus his eyes on the phone screen.

It’s open to a news site, and Peter continues blinking the sleep from his eyes, he realizes that it’s a picture of him from last night, well, him and Matt-- Spider-Man and Daredevil. It’s from when he was showing Matt that he’d added the same material to his suit as well. It must’ve been taken by someone in the building across the street, but Peter still doesn’t see what May is so pissed about. Why is she so upset about this? It’s not like he killed anyone-- hell, he didn’t even injure anyone. He told her where he was going to be before he headed out

“I told you I was with Daredevil last night. I don’t—”

“Scroll down,” she says harshly, her lower lip between her teeth and her foot tapping rapidly against the ground like it always does when she’s nervous.

Peter does, and his heart stops. 

What?

That’s not—

What the hell?

That can’t be—

He knows he makes an audible sound of confusion as he stares at the picture, but apparently that isn’t enough to prompt a response from May.

It’s another cellphone camera quality picture of him and Matt—Spider-Man and Daredevil—but it’s not. It can’t be. Because Matt has not-him backed up against the wall of an alley with one hand on not- his cheek and one hand far enough south to be out of the frame and his tongue so far down not-his throat that it’s a miracle he isn’t choking. Peter  _ knows _ that didn’t happen—the picture must be edited—but.

But oh god, it isn’t. The mind-numbing confusion melts away to be replaced with a potent cocktail of embarrassment and horror. The person against the wall is in a red and shiny black suit. They have a full-faced red mask that’s scrunched up from how it’s been pulled high enough to expose their mouth, and a tiny bit of a white lens covering their eye is visible between Matt’s fingers on their face. It isn’t him. It looks like him. He  _ knows _ that can’t be him. It’s Wade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings (SPOILER ALERT)  
\- Vague mentions of attempted sexual assault.  
\- Attempted police brutality.  
\- A character is incorrectly accused of having a relationship with a minor.
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long to get out! I've been soooo busy! I've tried to make it obvious in the tags and everything so far, but I'm going to say it again. Starting next chapter this fic will be covering incredibly sensitive topics in regards to assumed pedophilia, child abuse, and sexual abuse. I won't explicitly list what happens in the tags, but I will continue to put trigger warnings in the end notes. Next chapter will be very heavy and very angsty. Read past this point at your own risk. 
> 
> As always, check me out on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone and don't forget to leave kudos and comments to let me know you enjoyed it.


	5. The Teenage Vigilante's (Useless) Guide to Damage Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Of course I’m trying to protect him! Because he hasn’t done anything to me!” Peter snaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where it starts to get VERY UPSETTING. Trigger warnings at the end! Please, please, please check them if you think you may be triggered by the content. Having read this far, you should have an idea about what topics are going to be discussed.

“May, that isn’t me—” Peter starts as he continues staring at the second picture to reaffirm the fact that it’s Wade- definitely not himself. He can just sort of make out the shadow of the katana holsters being cast on the wall behind him, but it’s so faint that he might just be projecting on a stain on the wall. Really, the only way he’s definitely sure that isn’t Spider-Man is because he knows that he’s never once done anything like that—_especially_ not with Matt.

“Do you think I’m blind?” May asks, taking her phone back and scrolling up to the picture that actually _is _him. The cold fury is all gone, having been entirely replaced with flesh-melting venom. He’s only heard her this mad once in his entire life, and it’s about a million times worse than any of the times Mr. Stark has gotten pissed enough at him to show it. “You’re telling me this isn’t you?”

“Okay, well no. That one _is_ me, but the other one isn’t,” Peter explains, doing his best to keep his cool because this is all just a misunderstanding; they’ll have it cleared up in just a couple of minutes. He’s sure by tomorrow they’ll be laughing about it.

“Are you seriously trying to protect him? After what he’s done to you? He deserves to rot in prison,” May hisses, and _yep, so much for keeping his cool_.

Hearing May accuse Matt of doing that—of taking advantage of him, of assaulting him—is more than he can take in stride. Matt, who knows all the stray cats in Hell’s Kitchen. Matt, who’s taken bullets for Peter. Matt, who’s comforted Peter through panic attacks when they were just getting to know each other. Matt, who risked his life to drive Peter to Avengers Tower when he was hurt. Matt who, on multiple occasions, Peter has had to physically _hold back_ from beating rapists to death because he gets so upset. Hearing May accuse Matt of the thing that he finds so vile that he throws all his morals out the window when he finds a perpetrator is too much.

“Of course I’m trying to protect him! Because he hasn’t _done_ anything to me!” Peter snaps—_how did this manage to escalate so quickly_?

“Then who is this?!” May asks, nearly in hysterics as she jabs aggressively at the picture of Daredevil and Deadpool on her phone.

“It’s Wade!”

“_Wade?_”

“Deadpool!” Peter says with a relieved laugh. Finally, he’s getting somewhere! “It’s Wade!”

May seems to process this for a moment before the frown is back on her face in full force. “Wade and Matt are together. I saw how they were on your birthday.”

Shit. She’s right about that, but polyamory is a thing, right? So maybe he can just explain it off as that? No, May’s liberal, but she isn’t _that_ liberal. That’ll just make Wade seem like some sort of sleazebag or perv to her, and next thing he knows he’ll be getting accused of having an alleyway tryst with him too.

“Um—no?” Peter says, cringing at the way his voice cracks. He knows it sounds like a lie— it sort of is. Looks like he’s going to have to out Wade as being a bit of a slut. “Okay well, kinda. But he’s with Daredevil too!”

“And does Daredevil care that his boyfriend is with his lawyer?” May says, her voice oozing skepticism.

“No—he knows about that. And they aren’t dating either. Daredevil gets with a ton of other people too,” Peter explains, instantly realizing that was the wrong thing to say. “But not with me!” he rushes to add on.

May softens her expression a little, but the tension doesn’t leave her shoulders. She looks ready to snap, or maybe just fall to pieces. “Peter,” she says gently, “sweetheart, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the grown man who’s been taking advantage of you.”

“Nobody is taking advantage of me, May! We’re just friends!” Peter snaps.

“If you’re just friends then why is there a picture of him feeling you up last night followed very shortly by a picture of him putting his tongue down your throat?!” May looks like she’s going to be sick, and Peter feels absolutely horrible for her, but this isn’t something he can just let go. It’s clear that neither of them are going to drop it.

“He isn’t _feeling me up_—he’s feeling my suit!” Peter says with pure disgust in his words.

“And why in _God’s name _was he feeling your suit?”

Peter opens his mouth to answer but stops dead in his tracks. _To see if it was made of the same material as his suit because he’s blind and can’t tell unless he touches it_ isn’t exactly something he can say. He can’t out Matt’s identity to May—especially not when she’s acting like this. A public accusation of this caliber could well and truly ruin his already horribly tragic life.

May seems to take his aborted answer as some sort of admission, considering she sits on the edge of his bed and pulls him into a tight hug, one hand on the back of his head and the other between his shoulders. Peter can feel her shaking. He lets her hug him just to try and alleviate some of the pain this whole situation is causing her. Not that it would be causing her any pain if she’d just _listen_ to him.

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she whispers, squeezing him tighter as her voice breaks.

“Nothing happened to me!” Peter hisses, pulling away from May harshly. He _can’t_ listen to her accuse Matt of doing that, and he can’t deal with her touching him with how keyed up he is now. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this, May! You _know_ I wouldn’t!”

May flinches slightly at the harsh tone and looks at Peter with nothing but sympathy written into every line of her face. “Peter…” she starts gently.

“No! He didn’t do anything! He’s never laid a hand on me! Why won’t you believe me?!” Peter asks desperately.

“Because there’s a picture of him laying a hand on you that you admit is you. Because it doesn’t look like Deadpool in the picture you won’t admit is you. I don’t see any guns or knives or swords. The height doesn’t look right either. Peter—_please,_ just let me help you. We don’t—you don’t need to go to the cops. I won’t make you put yourself through that…” May says, and she sounds so damn heartbroken that Peter has too look away unless he wants tears to start welling up in his eyes to match his aunt.

Peter takes a deep breath. 

In four. Hold seven. Out eight. 

“May, I _promise_ he’s not hurting me. It’s just—it’s a misunderstanding, okay? Neither of those pictures are what they look like. I just… I can’t tell you _why_. I _can’t_.”

“I can’t just stand by and let him hurt you,” May says quietly.

“He isn’t hurting me! He’s my friend!” Peter tries again in desperation.

May looks the most grief-stricken Peter has ever seen her, and her lip trembles as she _finally _nods, though it’s immediately apparent that the nod isn’t because she suddenly believes him.

“Okay, Peter. I’m sorry. I’ll let you go back to sleep now. Let me know if you’re going anywhere. I’m here if you want to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Peter snaps, flinging back the covers as he gets out of bed.

He pointedly ignores May as he walks around his room collecting various items of clothing until he has a full outfit in his arms.

“Mind letting me get dressed? Because who knows what some good Samaritan will accuse you of if you don’t get out,” Peter says coldly, and he instantly regrets it when he sees the fucking _devastated_ look on May’s face.

“I’m trying to help you, Peter,” she says as she gets up from his bed.

Rather than back off and apologize for the comment that went too far, he doubles down on it, though God only knows why. “Yeah? Well, you’re not. Accusing someone who’s literally taken bullets for me of being a pedophile shockingly isn’t that helpful,” Peter says. “Now can you _please_ go?” He hates the way his voice trembles on the last ‘_please’_, despises the way it makes him sound weak and unsure.

May bites her lip and nods before leaving the room, shutting the door behind her. Peter notices the way her hands are clenched into white-knuckle fists at her sides.

He locks the door once she’s gone and throws his clothes down on the bed, groping around for his phone instead. Once he has it in his hand, he aggressively scrolls to Matt’s number in his recently called and jabs the screen.

The phone rings and rings and Peter’s sure it’s going to go to voicemail until it picks up at the last second.

“Hello?” comes a breathless voice that definitely isn’t Matt’s.

“Wade?” Peter asks before scoffing because _of course_. “You know what? I’m glad you answered. Is Matt there?”

“Uhh,” Wade says.

“I’m here,” comes Matt’s voice, sounding like it’s a couple feet from the phone.

“Great. Well in that case I can tell you both to keep it in your damn pants at the same time,” Peter says.

“What are you talking about? How did you know we—”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear it—I’m talking about last night,” Peter interrupts, because he _really_ doesn’t want to know what the rest of that sentence was going to be. He’s seen and heard more than enough about what the two of them get up to behind closed doors—or apparently in public places—for multiple lifetimes.

“I really do like you, kid, but how is that any of your business?” Wade asks, and Peter can _hear_ the raised nonexistent eyebrow.

“You know how your suit kinda looks like mine?” Peter says. “Even more now that mine is black and red too?”

“Uh, yeah…” Wade responds, sounding unsure.

“How we look pretty much identical when you can’t see our eyes or your weapons?”

“Where are you going with this?”

“_Someone_ got a picture of you two getting it on in an alley, and now the _Daily Bugle_ is writing articles on how Daredevil and, oh yeah, _Spider-Man_ are having a gay affair with _photographic evidence _included!” Peter hisses down the line.

“_What?!_” comes Matt’s voice, suddenly much closer to the phone as if he’s snatched it away from Wade.

“Yeah! My aunt and I just got in a massive fight because she doesn’t believe it’s Wade you’re all up on in the picture, she thinks you’re perving on _me_! That’s how much it looks like me! The only reason I can tell it isn’t me is because _I_ know I didn’t do that!”

There’s no response to that, and Peter pulls the phone away from his ear to check that the call didn’t disconnect. If either of those two hung up on him, there’s going to be hell to pay.

It’s still going.

“Hello?” he says.

There are faint voices in the background, so Peter repeats it, louder this time.

After a moment, Wade’s voice comes through much clearer and infinitely more serious. “Peter we have to go—we’ll call you back later.”

The phone beeps a few times once the call ends, and Peter is left staring at his phone. _What the hell was that?_

He bites his lip as he sits back down on the edge of his bed. Maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe he’s blowing it out of proportion. Maybe the article is a fluke.

With these hopes in mind, Peter switches over to Google News on his phone and types ‘_spider-man_’ into the search bar.

His hopes are instantly obliterated as every single article he can see without scrolling is talking about Spider-Man’s new relationship.

Everyone from the _New York Post_ to the damn _New York Times_ is talking about it, in the editorial section at least. Peter clicks the link for the _New York Times_ because that seems like the most trustworthy source that’s immediately apparent. Maybe they’ll mention the possibility that it isn’t Spider-Man considering the article is titled “Spider-Man Might Be Gay. So What?”.

> _New York City is home to a large, ever-growing population of superheroes. From the Avengers to the so-called Defenders, they work to fight threats to the city and its people. While the heavy lifting of alien invasions fall onto the shoulders of the Avengers, the smaller crimes of the city fall to heroes like Daredevil, Luke Cage, and, most recently, Spider-Man._
> 
> _It’s been over a year since the newest of these heroes entered the scene, and in that time, the public has come to adore him. While Spider-Man isn’t without his naysayers, he has a lot more public approval than Daredevil does- according to a study conducted by a graduate student at New York University. In fact, after the Avengers, Spider-Man inarguably tops the polls for popularity. Despite his more family-friendly image, cultivated in part by the fact that he seems to stick to restraining criminals as opposed to more violent methods, the Queens superhero began a partnership with Hell’s Kitchen’s own Daredevil a little over eight months ago._

Eight months? Has it really been that long? Peter shakes his head and goes back to reading.

> _Daredevil, once known as The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, is notorious for his brutal tactics and iron-fisted rule of his Manhattan neighborhood. His targets aren’t always so clearly labeled as Spider-Man’s, but a number of severe injuries ranging from concussions to comas have been attributed to the vigilante. Despite the public’s wariness about his methods, it’s statistically proven that violent crime rates in Hell’s Kitchen have dropped more than forty percent since Daredevil’s first appearance._
> 
> _Despite the differences in their methodologies, Spider-Man and Daredevil have formed a solid partnership across the boundaries of their boroughs. From stopping a rogue HYDRA scientist from infecting the world with a home-brewed zombie virus to smaller gang busts, it’s apparent that the pair has great crime-fighting chemistry._
> 
> _Just how deep this chemistry runs became apparent last night when someone anonymously submitted an image of the two heroes getting intimate in an alley to an Instagram and Twitter social media presence by the name of spidey-spotter, an account which posts images of Spider-Man throughout the city. The image undeniably depicts Daredevil and Spider-Man engaged in a passionate kiss, and people are posting their opinions on the matter to every available platform._
> 
> _While many boast to have already known about the relationship and more offer their congratulations to the couple, a number of people, including New York House of Representatives Republican candidate James Winston, are less happy about this revelation._
> 
> _“[Spider-Man and Daredevil’s relationship] is an abomination. Our streets aren’t safe when people like them are the one’s [sic] protecting them” Winston posted to Twitter earlier this morning, when asked his opinion on the matter by a curious member of the public._
> 
> _While Winston isn’t likely to be winning any elections in New York with these ideals given the strong presence of the Democratic party, there are still a number of citizens who agree with him._
> 
> _“it’s f****** disgusting” Tweeted another person._
> 
> _“Used to feel safer walking around Hell’s Kitchen at night knowing Daredevil was there. Now I just feel lucky that f** never tried anything with me” contributed someone else._
> 
> _“hey punisher the kitchen needs u again. dont miss your shot this time” is what a former police officer added to the discussion._
> 
> _On the opposite end of the spectrum, a number of people are fawning and obsessing over the newly revealed relationship._
> 
> _“they’re adorable. wish whoever took the pic had aimed the camera a little lower tho”_
> 
> _“always knew Daredevil was a top”_
> 
> _Both ends of this spectrum are disturbing. Whether you’re one of the people who reap the benefits these vigilantes have produced for the city yet call for them to be shot to death because of your bigotry or one of the people who discuss their interest in the sex lives of complete strangers, you should take a serious look in the mirror and consider your actions._
> 
> _Daredevil might be gay. So what? Does this change any of what he’s done for the city? Does this make him less credible regarding the people he’s turned over to police? If you said yes, then that’s bigotry speaking over logic._
> 
> _Spider-Man might be gay. So what? This doesn’t take away the lives he’s saved. He’s still risked his life time and time again to save civilians, including a group of school-children who nearly plummeted to their deaths in Washington DC last year._
> 
> _Spider-Man and Daredevil both sacrifice their time, their safety, and, quite nearly, their lives to the cause of protecting the city. We repay them by taking non-consensual photographs of them in intimate moments. It’s time that we, the people of New York, take a step back and realize that these heroes do not owe us anything. It’s us who owe them, and what we owe them is a debt that’s impossible to repay. So why don’t we start with respecting their privacy?_

That’s… not exactly what Peter was hoping for, but it _was_ better than the worst case scenario of someone gushing over a nonexistent relationship.

Peter returns to the search page and selects the next article down—one from _Buzzfeed News_. The article itself is surprisingly objective in its discussion, and it even goes so far as to add a description of the photo for visually impaired people. Peter scrolls to the end of the article, and cringes at the title of one of the linked pieces: _11 Times That Spider-Man and Daredevil Proved They Have a Better Relationship Than You Ever Will_**. **And how has anyone even had the time to make that yet?

_ _

Despite his every instinct telling him not to, Peter clicks on the link.

** 11 Times That Spider-Man and Daredevil Proved They Have a Better Relationship Than You Ever Will **

_It’s okay. We won’t judge you for crying about it._

  1. **The time they went to pride together**

It’s a picture of him and Matt at pride. He’s in the foreground chatting excitedly with some people who are probably just a couple years older than him and taking a selfie while Matt is standing off to the side a little with the fondest smile on his face. Peter doesn’t really get what Matt smiling at him proves about their “_relationship_” though. Some people are just desperate to see something where there isn’t anything.

  1. **The time Spidey almost fought the cops for Daredevil**

Peter recognizes instantly that the second picture is from their showdown with the mad scientist at JFK International. It’s from when everything had been- for the most part- resolved, and the airport security guards had tried to arrest Matt. Peter’s standing between Matt and the guards and, if he does say so himself, looking incredibly menacing. It’s a good picture, but again, Peter isn’t seeing anything in it that says “relationship”. He’s sure that any of the heroes would stand up for each other like that- it’s common courtesy.

  1. **The time Spidey brought his boo a flower**

Peter groans at this one and cringes slightly. It’s of him and Matt on a rooftop, and he’s holding out a single red rose to Matt who’s smiling up at him from where he’s sat on the edge of the roof. He knows that the local heroes, in particular himself, get creepshotted pretty often, but did they _have_ to get a picture of this?

_“Hey, DD,” Peter says, landing on the rooftop beside his friend. He’s just returning from doing a final round of the area they’re in before going home for the night. Matt offered to do it, but he hurt his knee earlier in the evening and Peter doesn’t want him to end up hurting himself worse with unnecessary parkour._

_“Hey, Spidey,” Matt replies, leaning back and tilting his head up towards Peter’s general direction. “How’d it look out there?”_

_Peter always wonders why Matt does that—gives the illusion that he’s looking at people. When it’s as Daredevil with someone who doesn’t know who he is Peter gets it, but with him? And with people in his real-person life too? He just doesn’t get the point of it._

_“Pretty good,” Peter answers, looking down at the rose in his hand. “I helped a lady bring her groceries inside so she could carry her kid who fell asleep, and she gave me this.”_

_“That’s nice,” Matt says pleasantly, his head still tilted in Peter’s direction._

_“Yeah,” Peter agrees. “But um, I don’t know if I can make it all the way home with it. It doesn’t feel right to just throw it away so uh. Do you um… do you want it?” He extends the hand holding the rose out towards Matt, and Matt reaches out to take it from him._

_“I’m sure I’ll find a use for it,” he says with a smile._

_After he gets home, Peter checks his phone to see a message from Matt._

1:03 AM

Matt:_ I did find a use for it. Got jumped by a Ukrainian mob enforcer, and he ended up with some pretty severe thorn damage to the eye. Unfortunately the flower didn’t survive being used as brass knuckles._

  1. **The time they had their iconic ice cream date**

Sorry, their _what?_ The cringing doesn’t quit as Peter scrolls to the fourth picture, and yet again sees himself and Matt on a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen. This time they’re both sitting down on the edge, and they both have ice cream. Matt has on leg hanging off the edge and one bent at the knee and planted on the roof. Peter is sitting with his legs crisscross, and his mask pulled up to reveal his mouth. Matt is leaning forward and has one of his hands on Peter’s cheek.

_“So,” Matt says, sounding far more amused than he has any right to and smiling up at Peter again._ “_Ice cream.”_

_“Yes, ice cream,” Peter replies, holding the cone out to Matt. “You want it or not?”_

_Matt takes the offered cone. “First flowers, now this. I’m starting to think my neighborhood likes you more than they like me.”_

_“I help people with carrying their groceries and with moving their industrial freezers into their ice cream shops. You stop drug trafficking. Scooch over,” Peter says, sitting beside Matt on the border of the roof with his legs folded up beneath him and pulling his mask up just enough to expose his mouth._

_“You’d think I’d at least get free drugs if that were the case,” Matt complains jokingly._

_“You think I’d get free ice cream if I beat the business owner up?” Peter asks, and Matt snorts._

_“Fair point.”_

_They sit there and eat their ice cream together, Peter looking at the city around them and Matt listening to it. After a minute, Matt leans forward to swipe his thumb over Peter’s chin._

_“You got some ice cream on your face,” he explains as he sits back. “Can’t have my prodigy child looking like a slob.”_

_This time it’s Peter’s turn to snort. “Thanks. How’d you even know it was there?”_

_“It was colder there than the rest of you,” Matt answers simply._

  1. **The time Spidey got a new suit to match with DD**

The fifth picture is from quite a while back—it’s from the first time he worked with Matt after getting the suit that Melvin made for him which, if he recalls correctly, is the same night that Matt had to drive him to the tower for his injuries. They’re on a rooftop, as is becoming an apparent pattern, this time in Queens, and Peter is watching Matt as he listens in on the Albanian mob.

  1. **The time Daredevil saved Spidey’s life**

The next picture is from later that same night, and it’s Matt holding him bridal-style just beside the car he’d run up onto the sidewalk in front of the Tower. Peter doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen this picture—most of the ones he recalls from that night are Matt’s truly abysmal driving.

  1. **… and the time Spidey saved his**

The seventh picture makes Peter’s heart stutter in his chest. It’s from the night Matt died. He’s holding Matt who has his suit halfway off and is soaking both of them through with blood. Peter is bent over slightly with his forehead pressed to Matt’s and the hand of the arm that’s beneath Matt’s knees is holding his friend’s hand in what Peter remembers was a white-knuckle grip.

Peter has to set down his phone for a moment and take a few deep breaths as he re-establishes the fact that Matt is okay in his mind. That was one of the worst experiences of his life. He doesn’t know what would’ve happened if they’d lost Matt that night.

He picks his phone back up and scrolls to the next picture, eager to get through to the end of the article. He cringes as he sees a picture that he’s already seen more of than he wanted to today.

  1. **The time Spidey changed his suit to match his man again**

It’s from last night. They’re, yet again, standing on a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen, and he’s holding Matt’s gloveless hand up to his side to feel his suit. Matt is smiling his stupid, charming smile like always. Peter only looks at it for a moment before scrolling to the next one more aggressively than is probably necessary.

  1. **The time Spidey couldn’t contain his excitement at DD being back (in black)**

Peter really should’ve guessed someone would’ve taken a picture of this one considering just how many people were there to witness it. It’s of Matt’s first night back after dying (even if it was only temporary, Peter’s never letting that one go). Peter has his arms around Matt in a tight hug and is hanging off of him, his feet entirely off the ground. Matt is hugging him back with a smile on his face that matches the one that was Peter was definitely wearing beneath his mask.

  1. **The time they danced together on a rooftop like something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel**

As he scrolls to the tenth picture, Peter gets the sudden urge to bash his head against the wall until he falls into a coma that he’ll never wake up from. It’s him and Matt on, you guessed it, a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen. Rather than sitting and chatting this time though, they’re dancing. It’s ridiculous, and Peter really gets how this one might’ve been misconstrued, but yet again it isn’t what it looks like.

_“So, same time tomorrow?” Matt asks, cracking his neck and his knuckles on the rooftop they’ve finally come to a stop on._

_“God, I wish,” Peter says emphatically. “But I can’t. Mr. Stark wants me at this charity ball that SI is hosting tomorrow. He said all the other interns from the R&D department are going to be there, so it’ll look weird if I don’t go.”_

_“That sounds fun,” Matt says. “One Percent-er parties like that always have the best food.”_

_“I mean, yeah maybe. But I’ve never been to one before. Mr. Stark got me a fancy suit for it and everything, but I don’t even know how to dance and it’s a ball. I bet I’ll get so nervous I accidentally stick to someone and unmask myself to the world,” Peter says with a defeated sigh, slumping back against the ladder leading up the water tank on the roof._

_“Dancing isn’t hard,” Matt says. “It’s just like fighting. But you don’t hit anyone.”_

_“Gee, thanks Double D,” Peter drawls in a voice that drips sarcasm. “That was real helpful.”_

_Matt scoffs, and Peter’s sure he rolls his eyes behind the mask. “If _I_ can learn to dance, then I’m sure _you_ can. Get over here.”_

_“Are you… are you going to teach me how to dance?” Peter asks incredulously._

_“I taught you how to fight, didn’t I?” he says, and yeah, fair point._

_Peter steps away from the water tank and over to where Matt is standing in the large, empty space that expands over most of the roof._

_“Here,” Matt says, positioning Peter’s hands. “I’ll teach you how to lead.”_

  1. **The time things got hot in Hell’s Kitchen**

The last picture in that article is the one that started this whole damn fiasco, and Peter looks at Matt and Wade rounding second base for less than a second before he closes the article.

So, maybe it is just as bad as he’d hoped it wasn’t. The fact is that the public has come to the conclusion that the picture is undeniably of Spider-Man and Daredevil.

As Peter sits there and contemplates what to do, he feels his phone buzz in his hands. He turns it over and looks at the screen to see a notification from the group chat.

_7:39 AM_

_Frank C:_ would anyone like to explain the absolute shit show that’s going on right now?

_Frank C:_ because there is no way in hell that picture is what people are saying it is

_7:39 AM_

_Jessica:_ okay yeah I was wondering that too. Seriously, what’s going on?

Peter scrambles to unlock his phone as he sees the notifications and immediately starts typing his reply. He doesn’t know what he’d do if these guys started accusing Matt of the same things May had.

_7:39 AM_

_You:_ it’s wade

_You_: in the picture that’s going around

_7:40 AM_

_You_: not me

_You:_ if anyone calls matt a pedophile I will be legally required to knock some sense into you

_7:41 AM_

_Frank:_ I was assuming photoshop. that’s wilson?

_ image attached_

Peter clicks the image and groans once it loads.

_7:42 AM_

_You:_ no that’s me

_You:_ the face sucking one is Wade

_You:_ that pic I was showing him my suit was the same stuff as his

_You:_ bc u know. It’s not like he could tell by looking.

_7:43 AM_

_You:_ mr c you’ve seen what he does to pedophiles

_You:_ I promise it’s not me

_7:43 AM_

_Frank C:_ don’t worry I believe you, no need to send so many texts

_7:43 AM_

_Jessica:_ oh thank god I was worried we were going to have to execute Matt for a second there

Peter’s absolutely sure that she means it as a joke, but his heart stops as the next message comes through.

_7:43 AM_

_Matt_: You really thought that I would do that?

_7:44 AM_

_Jessica:_ Matt no you just have to admit the picture looks like spidey

_Jessica: _wait shit

_Jessica:_ believe me when I say it looks 98% like spidey and 2% like dp

Matt types for quite a while, the bubble with three dots disappearing and reappearing frequently before it finally disappears for good with no message having been sent.

_7:47 AM_

_Jessica: _shit

_7:48 AM_

_Frank C:_ that was just fantastic jones. Great job.

_7:49 AM_

_You:_ yeah ms Jones what the hell

_7:50 AM_

_Jessica: _I know I fucked up guys_. _does someone need to go check on him?

_7:50 AM_

_You:_ I don’t think so. wade’s with him

_7:51 AM_

_Jessica: _do you need someone to come check on you? Because this must be weird as hell for you

_7:51 AM_

_You:_ no I’m okay. I just have a few people I need to clear things up with

_7:52 AM_

_Frank C:_ alright Peter just let us know if you need help with anything at all.

Peter closes the group chat and sets his phone down on the bed, standing up to get dressed. He’s not sure exactly sure if there’s a guidebook on running damage control for the situation he’s in. Hell, even Reddit would be stumped by this question. The thing is, Peter doesn’t have the option of asking random strangers on the internet for help with this. He can’t expose himself like that, and again, he’s pretty sure that literally no one in the history of ever has experienced a problem quite like this.

Once he’s dressed and feeling slightly more put together, Peter opens up Instagram and starts typing a message to the group chat that consists of himself, Ned, and MJ.

_You: _Okay before anyone gets the chance to freak out, let me clear this stuff up. The picture of spider-man and daredevil on the roof? That is spider-man. The picture of “spider-man” and daredevil doing mega pda in an alley? That’s not spider-man, that’s Deadpool. No need to be concerned. I promise I’m telling the truth. Perfectly safe and fine and not in a relationship with any adult. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

He doubts either of those two are awake yet, so Peter doesn’t bother with waiting for a response to his message before he starts gathering up the school work that he had intended to and still does intend to get done today. That being said, there’s no way in hell he’s going to be able to get it done here, at home, when there’s a chance that May might come back any minute and start trying her best to protect him from a truly nonexistent threat.

He hesitantly leaves the bedroom to go brush his teeth, and he can hear May talking, most likely on the phone, behind her closed bedroom door. The words are muffled enough that he can’t make them out without putting actual focus into it, and Peter isn’t really sure If he wants to hear what she’s saying. He has an idea of what it might be though.

It wastes money they barely have—they both know it does—but May still pays the bill to keep Ben’s phone hooked up. Right after he’d died, Peter remembers hearing May call his number over and over to listen to his voicemail message. He remembers the way she cried, and he remembers doing the same when he called Ben’s number, hoping for an answer he knew he’d never get. After a while, Peter noticed that May would actually leave messages after the tone, not just listen to Ben’s voice, hang up, and repeat. Eventually Peter figured out that the messages are always about things that May is struggling with. Overdue bills. Worrying about Peter being bullied. How much she misses him. Peter ignores his aunt’s voice both because he wants to respect her privacy and because he doesn’t want to hear May crying into her dead husband’s voicemail box about how she couldn’t keep their kid from getting molested.

Peter slinks around as he finishes up his morning routine, finally heading back to the bedroom to collect his backpack and phone. After patting down his pockets to ensure that he has his keys and wallet as well, he quietly heads for the door and locks it behind him. He’s made the decision that the easiest place to get work done would probably be the library. Normally he’d take the time to leave a note to let May know where he’s gone off to, but these aren’t exactly normal circumstances. It might be petty or childish—he _knows_ that May’s just doing what she thinks is best for him—but what she’d said hurt him. Accusing his friend—probably his closest friend after Ned, if Peter’s being honest with himself, regardless of how sad that is—of grooming him in the first place was incredibly hurtful, but what hurts more is that she wouldn’t believe him about what actually happened.

That doesn’t just sting; it slices straight down to bone. If asked, Peter would be the first to admit that he’s the product of an unorthodox upbringing. He hasn’t really got any concrete memories of his birth parents, and any memories he _does_ have are most definitely augmented by stories May and Ben told him once his birth parents were already gone and in the ground. Peter never said so, didn’t really think it was something that he needed to say, but he considered May and Ben to be his parents. He does have concrete memories of being a young child and being gently corrected when he called his aunt and uncle mom or dad respectively. He understands why—he knows they wanted to keep his parents alive in his mind—but to him May and Ben are—were his parents. Now it’s just May, and while their relationship is wildly different to a typical mother and son relationship, he does consider her to be his mom. Which is what makes this sudden distrust so difficult to handle.

She’s _always_ given him the benefit of the doubt, and rightfully so considering Peter can count on one hand the number of times he’s told his aunt a lie about something that actually matters. Granted, one of those things is _I have super powers and use them to enact vigilante justice_, but still, fewer than five major lies. Aside from that handful of things, Peter has _always_ told May the truth about the important things. He’d even gone to her (and Ben) about something along a similar thread in the past.

It’s not something he likes to think about as is, but without the trusting relationship he’s had with May and Ben from almost as soon as he started living with them it could’ve been so, _so_ much worse.

After his parents passed away and he’d first come to live with May and Ben, it had been a little bit difficult to adjust. He wasn’t exactly the most social of children—still isn’t now—but with all the changes it had been particularly hard to make friends. He was the new kid at school halfway through the year and quiet to begin with, that coupled with the fact that somehow one of the kids found out about the whole dead parents thing and spread it around made him something of an outcast.

Peter realizes that over the course of his thoughts, his feet have already carried him all the way to the library. He shoulders his surprise and walks in quietly, offering a quick smile to the librarian reshelving books near the door as he passes by her and makes for the tables situated near the back of the first floor.

He finds them unoccupied apart from a college-aged girl with a lot of piercings who looks incredibly stressed about the notes she’s taking from what looks to be an organic chemistry textbook. Peter feels immediate sympathy for her and settles down at the table diagonal to the one she’s at, pulling out his laptop and books to get to work.

As he works on his response for chapter seven of _Slaughterhouse-Five_, he finds his mind wandering back down the path it had been straying towards on his walk, his eyes aimed blankly towards the rows and rows of bookshelves.

During that time of isolation from his peers as a child, the only friends Peter really had were the books he read. He was, like, seven, so it wasn’t as though he was reading anything that complicated, but he was steadily working his way through all of the nonfiction, fully-illustrated, children’s books on dinosaurs. He remembers vividly that he’d wandered away from the counter where May was chatting with the librarian after returning the last batch of books, to the aisle of children’s nonfiction books. He’d picked out the book on hadrosaurs and sat on the floor right there to open up the book in his lap and very carefully start turning the pages with tiny, uncoordinated hands.

_“Hey,” a voice says, “whatcha reading?”_

_Peter looks up from the illustration of a hadrosaur wading through a lake to see an older boy crouching down in front of him with an inviting smile on his face and librarian’s cart stacked high with books at his side. Peter looks away shyly and doesn’t make eye contact as he murmurs, “Hadrosaurus.”_

_“You like dinosaurs? That’s cool,” the older boy says. “I do too. My favorite was always stegosaurus. What’s your favorite?”_

_“Pa-chy-ce-pha-lo-saur-us,” Peter says, dictating each syllable carefully so that he doesn’t mess it up in front of the older kid._

_“Wow.” The older boy sounds impressed, and Peter preens a little bit at the tone his voice has taken on. “That’s a hard word to say. You must be really smart. What grade are you in? Second? Third?”_

_“First,” Peter answers, holding up one finger but refusing to stray from the single word answers reserved for strangers._

_“Only first? Wow,” he says again. “Your parents must be really proud of you. Where are they?”_

_“My parents are gone,” Peter says, frowning just a little bit and looking back down at the picture of the hadrosaur. He traces one finger carefully along the dinosaur’s bill and focuses on the sound of his finger squeaking against the glossy page as opposed to the stinging feeling that has started to prick at the corners of his eyes._

_“They’re gone?” the older boy says, the impressed tone having been entirely replaced with a concerned one._

_Peter nods but doesn’t look up from the book. He traces the water plants that hang limply down from the hadrosaur’s mouth._

_“Who brought you here?” he asks._

_“Aunt May,” Peter answers, and from the edges of his vision he can see some of the tension leave the boy’s shoulders._

_“Oh, okay. Do you know where she is?”_

_Peter thinks for a moment before shaking his head. Aunt May probably isn’t still returning their books—it doesn’t take very long to do that._

_“Do you want me to help you find her?” he says, and Peter hesitates._

_Talking to strangers in the library is one thing, but wandering off with them is another._

_“I’m not supposed to go off with strangers,” Peter says, casting a hesitant glance at the hand the boy has extended to him._

_“That’s very smart,” the boy praises. “My name’s Steven, but you can call me Skip. What’s your name?”_

_“Peter.”_

_“Well, Peter. I’d say I’m not a stranger anymore,” Skip says, moving his extended hand a little bit._

_That’s a solid line of logic to the mind of a seven year old, and Peter gently shuts the book and reaches his hand out to take Skip’s._

_Skip takes his hand and walks him through the library, all the while making idle conversation with him. As the walk through the aisles full of magazines, Peter hears his name being called and turns toward the source._

_“Peter!” May is saying as she comes to kneel in front of him and pull him into a tight hug. “Where did you go? Who is this?”_

_“I went to look at the dino books,” Peter answers. “This is Skip. He was helping me look for you.”_

_“What have I told you about wandering off?” May scolds gently even as she smothers her nephew in a hug. She turns her head toward Skip. “Thank you for helping him. I try to keep an eye on him, but he just keeps sneaking off.”_

_Peter wriggles out of his aunt’s hug, and she stands back up to talk to Skip while Peter cranes his neck to observe the conversation._

_“It’s no problem,” Skip says with a smile. “I’m sure I was the same when I was his age. It just takes a little getting used to—I’m sure you’ll have it down in no time.”_

_May tilts her head. “What do you mean?”_

_“Oh, um, he mentioned that his parents… weren’t around anymore. It seemed kinda like a recent development, so I just assumed…” Skip says awkwardly._

_May openly gawks at him. “Peter _told_ you that?”_

_“He did,” Skip confirms._

_After that, Peter gets bored of listening to the conversation and plops back down on the floor, opening his book back up to a different page than the one he’d been looking at earlier._

_He manages to finish tracing along the whole picture and mouthing the words that he knows to himself as he reads them by the time May finishes talking to Skip and crouches back down to Peter’s level to get his attention._

_“Did you find a book that you want, sweetheart?” she asks softly, tucking a messy curl of hair behind his ear._

_Peter nods and closes the hadrosaurus book to show May the cover._

_“That’s a good choice,” May says. “Do you wanna pick out another one too?”_

_“Okay,” Peter says softly, clambering up from the floor and taking his aunt’s hand._

Peter shakes his head and forces himself to focus back on what he’s writing. The constant, steady movement of his eyes flicking constantly back and forth between the book laid out in front of him and the computer screen works somewhat like a hypnotist swinging a pocket watch in the motion of a pendulum, luring his thoughts back down a path which he’s spent years desperately trying to avoid.

_“Hey Peter,” May says, “you remember that nice young man from the library last week?”_

_Peter thinks for a moment before nodding. He does sort of remember, but mostly he remembers the hadrosaur book._

_“Well, I was talking to some other grown-ups at the library, and he babysits for them sometimes. Mrs. Strickley isn’t going to be able to watch you after school next week, so I was wondering if you would be okay with Skip watching you instead.”_

_Peter likes that May is asking him rather than saying that this is how it will be; making the decision himself feels very adult. “He can watch me.”_

_“Alright, baby. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun.”_

It wasn’t a lot of fun. The first day was a bit awkward with stilted conversation and standoffishness on Peter’s part. By the second day he’d warmed up to Skip a little. The third day was alright, and the fourth day was decidedly not.

_“So, what do you want to do now?” Skip asks Peter as they sit on the living room couch, empty plates on the coffee table in front of them._

_“I wanna read my book,” Peter answers, earning himself a nod._

_“You’re gonna be smarter than me if you keep reading so many books,” Skip replies, taking Peter’s hand and walking with him to the bedroom._

_Peter sits on the edge of his bed and Skip sits right beside him, handing Peter his most recent book from the library._

_Peter opens the book up and reads the words on each page to himself before looking at the pictures for a while longer and tracing over them. After around ten pages, Skip speaks, and the sudden noise startles Peter just a little bit._

_“You like looking at the pictures a lot, don’t you?” he says, looking down at Peter._

_“Yeah. They’re nice,” Peter answers, unsure of what else to say._

_“I have some other cool pictures you could look at, if you want.”_

In four. Hold seven. Out eight. In four. Hold seven. Out eight. In four. Hold seven. Out eight. Peter breathes like that for a couple minutes, his English assignment now the furthest thing from the front of his mind.

_May looks as though she’s been struck across the face when she gets a response to asking how her nephew’s day was._

_“Peter, what do you mean he showed you ‘grown-up pictures’?” she asks, and there’s a sort of shake in her voice that reminds Peter of how she sounded at the funeral, only this time it’s angry._

_Peter shies away a little and shrugs._

_May kneels down to Peter’s level and shows her hands in an open gesture. “I’m not mad you, baby, yeah? You can talk to me…”_

_“Pictures of people doing no-no stuff. It was weird. I didn’t like it,” Peter answers._

_May gets a look in her eyes that Peter’s never seen before, but it disappears after the tiniest fraction of a second. “Did… did he touch you?”_

_“He gave me a lot of hugs,” Peter says. “Even though I said I didn’t want hugs.”_

_“Okay. I-- okay.” May nods in a jerky motion and stands back up, her hands clenching into fists rhythmically. “Can you go read your book for a minute, sweetie? I need to make a phone call.”_

_“Okay,” Peter murmurs, obediently heading back to his room to retrieve the book. He stops in the doorway though. Looking at his bed makes his stomach hurt, and seeing the dinosaur book on diplodocus May wants him to read makes it a hundred times worse_

_Standing in the hallway around the corner, Peter listens to May’s voice to try and feel less sick to his stomach._

_“Ben, I think you need to come home,” May is saying quietly._

_“Because Peter just told me the babysitter showed him porn.” She’s quiet for a minute. “I know. I know. God-- you think I don’t feel the same? He was a volunteer at the library, some of the other parents vouched for him—oh God, Ben. He babysits for them too.”_

It never went to court, or at least Peter doesn’t remember having to testify. He doesn’t like to think about it much, because odds are even if the guy pled guilty and went to jail, he’s out by now. Either that or he’s dead, and it scares Peter a little to realize which of those options he’d rather be the case.

When’s the day going to come when someone has to restrain him from beating a sex offender to death? A part of Peter’s brain that’s more honest with him than he would prefer it to be sometimes supplies that it’ll probably be relatively soon, assuming anyone’s there to stop him after this clusterfuck.

As Peter claws his way out of those less than pleasant thoughts, his eyes focus back on what he must have been staring at for quite some time: his backpack. Or more specifically, one of the pins on his backpack. Lightning runs down the length of Peter’s spine.

_Stark Industries _says the pin.

“Oh _shit_,” says Peter, practically jumping up from the table and frantically shoving all of his crap back into his backpack because _shit_.

How, how, _how_ could he not realize Mr. Stark would have seen the news too? How could he not realize that Mr. Stark has got to be plotting Matt’s _literal_ murder right now? Has probably been plotting it for hours already?

After fumbling to gather up all of his shit and accidentally toppling a chair, Peter sprints out of the library, much to the annoyance of some of the other patrons, not that he can really be bothered to give a damn about that considering the circumstances. Out of everyone he knows, Tony has the best shot at actually tracking Matt down, and Tony’s well acquainted with the concept of shooting first and asking questions later in what he considers to be dire circumstances.

He makes it to the nearest subway station in record time and flies down the stairs, all the while giving himself a vicious mental beat-down for not realizing earlier that this would be the real problem.

Tony has never liked Daredevil. In fact, Peter would even go so far as to say that Tony dislikes Daredevil. Some of his reasons would have some validity if it weren’t for the hypocrisy, but for the most part Peter has no idea why their relationship is so strained. It doesn’t really matter why it’s strained though—just that it is. This bomb has been ticking for a long time, and thanks to some two-bit journalists who don’t bother to check their facts, it’s about to explode.

The subway is taking too damn long to get there, and with all of the nervous pacing he’s doing on the platform, Peter wonders if it’d be better to just put the energy towards running to the Tower. He’s just about to go for it when finally, _finally_ it arrives at the platform. Despite knowing it won’t make the train go any faster, Peter still barely lets the other passengers off before squeezing into the packed car. The shoulders jostling into him do nothing to ease his nerves, especially not with the way the spidey sense is freaking out horribly at the realization that Matt’s untimely demise at the hands of Mr. Stark could be coming closer to reality with every passing second.

It’s pure agony every time the train screeches to a halt at the next stop on its schedule. The sea of bodies rocks with the decrease in speed followed by more people piling in, even at stops which are typically barren as a ghost town. Every body bumping into Peter’s makes something in his head shriek, and for the first time Peter wonders if maybe this is more than just the spidey sense-- that there might be something deeper to worry about here. He has plenty of time for this new worry to implant deep in his chest considering this subway is running slower than any other he’s ever been on.

When the doors finally, finally, _finally_ open up onto the platform he’s been waiting for, Peter shoves past all the other commuters to escape and make a mad dash out of the station. 

Peter remembers approximately jack shit from the time he gets off of the subway to the time he slams his way through the front doors to Avengers Tower, but going off the way his lungs and legs are burning, he must’ve sprinted the entire way there, heedless of the crowded streets.

He scans his ID badge at the checkpoint, ignoring the friendly greeting one of the security guards offers him as he sprints to the elevators so fast he slams into the wall harder than would probably be advised as he repeatedly hits the button to call an elevator to this floor. He paces back and forth fast enough to hear the air whipping against his ears like a particularly harsh wind. 

When the elevator doors finally open with their obnoxiously pleasant chime, Peter rushes in, followed by three other people who are all giving him slightly wary looks. He gives a bit of a forced smile, but with these other people around he isn’t about to ask Friday to take him directly to where Mr. Stark is. Most employees don’t even get a response from her, and a teenageer getting access to the exact location of Tony Stark on request has just a little too much eyebrow raising potential. 

Instead of begging the AI to take him to Tony, Peter pushes the button for the floor with Tony’s personal lab. That does garner a bit of attention from his (in the loosest possible interpretation of the phrase) colleagues, but much less than the other option would’ve.

Of course these three are all going to separate floors from each other, and of course all of them are before the floor he’s trying to get to, meaning Peter has to stand there awkwardly and give what MJ has told him is the ‘white person smile’ to the strangers as they slowly trickle off to attend to their own business.

Once he’s finally alone, Peter speaks out into the air that’s too still in comparison to the way he’s practically shaking.

“Friday, where’s Mr. Stark?” Peter asks with a trembling voice.

“He’s asked that he not be disturbed,” Friday responds pleasantly.

Shit. 

“Is he in the Tower at least?”

“Yes, he is.”

Shoving down the momentary panic, Peter realizes he can work with that.

The elevator doors open out onto Tony’s lab, and Peter walks in.

“Mr. Stark?” he calls hopefully, disappointed but not at all surprised at the lack of answer.

“Friday?” Peter asks again.

“Yes, Peter?”

“Could you _please_ tell me where Mr. Stark is? It’s an emergency. Something happened and I really, really need to talk to him. It’s about Daredevil.” Peter hopes that sounds sufficiently urgent and teary enough to garner some sympathy, even from an artificial being.

There’s a moment of pause before a response comes.

“He’s in conference room 3102,” comes Friday’s somewhat hesitant reply. 

“_Thank you_,” Peter says emphatically before sprinting back to the elevator which, miracle of miracles, hasn’t been summoned to another floor yet.

When he slams the door to the conference room open, Peter feels like a madman and looks the part too, what with the way he’s panting and drenched in a spidey-sense induced flop sweat. 

“I don’t know, Tony,” Colonel Rhodes is saying. “Are you sure that’s the best--” he stops speaking when he’s interrupted by the door smacking into the wall at full force, a screw flying out of the hinge and making soft _cling_ sounds as it bounces across the floor.

When Mr. Stark, Colonel Rhodes, and Mr. Barton all turn to stare at Peter’s dramatic “speak now or forever hold your peace” interruption, he feels his heart drop down to the soles of his feet.

There’s a hologram hovering over the conference table in the middle of the room covered in about thirty different articles about Spider-Man and Daredevil’s relationship, including that cursed _Buzzfeed_ article. It’s flicking through various pictures in various places: of him, of Matt, of him and Matt, of-- oh shit, _actual-not-Daredevil _Matt and Foggy, but that one slides to a different picture soon enough.

With all the adults staring at him in a silence that none of them seems willing to break, it’s all Peter can do to blurt out, “It isn’t what it looks like.”

Those six words are more than enough to call one of the most furious expressions Peter’s ever seen to Tony’s face, but before he can say anything he’s being interrupted. 

“Tony, let’s hear the kid out,” Colonel Rhodes says, indebting Peter to him eternally.

Tony fumes, but he does so silently, giving the room’s other occupant a clear moment to speak up.

“Pete,” Mr. Barton says in a gentle tone that does _not_ suit him in the slightest, “what isn’t what it looks like?”

“The picture of Daredevil making out with Spider-Man,” Peter says, his words coming out all wrong because of how thrown off he is by this strange, collected, adult Mr. Barton. “I mean-- it isn’t that. That’s what it looks like, but it’s not. It’s Daredevil and Deadpool. Not Spider-Man.”

Staying quiet for that long seems to be all that Tony can manage.

“You’re telling me that this is Deadpool?” he says, swiping his hand at the hologram to blow up the two pictures that set this whole misunderstanding in motion.

“That one is,” Peter says, pointing to the kiss. “That one… that one isn’t,” he adds, pointing to the one of Matt touching his suit and smiling.

“Could you explain what’s going on in that picture for us?” Mr. Barton says in this bizarre new personality. It’s really freaking Peter the hell out-- can’t he just look like a mess and fall out of his chair like usual? If Mr. Barton is taking things this seriously, then Peter doesn’t even want to think about how Tony is taking it.

“I… no,” Peter says, biting down on his bottom lip.

“No?” Colonel Rhodes asks. “Why not?”

“It’s a secret,” Peter replies. “Well-- it’s part of a bigger secret. And if I tell you then the whole thing will get out and that would ruin Daredevil’s life.” The second the words are out of his mouth Peter wants to jump out the nearest window. _Why in the hell does he keep phrasing everything so poorly?!_ “I mean-- it’s just-- it’s not what it looks like.”

Those last six words seem to be more than enough to jumpstart Mr. Stark’s brain back into action, and this time the soft hiss of his name from one of his adult friends isn’t enough to quell the anger.

“Not what it looks like? Peter, what the hell else could that be?! You gonna tell me Daredevil slipped and fell and started feeling you up?” Mr. Stark says incredulously, earning himself a rough elbow in the side from Colonel Rhodes who, although he looks just as furious as Tony, is pretty good at keeping a level head about most things.

“It’s not what it looks like. I can’t tell you more than that. Why can’t you just believe me?” Peter asks a little desperately.

“Because sometimes people you trust can abuse that trust,” Mr. Barton says. “Look, Pete I know you’re strong. I know you could knock all of us on our asses faster than we could blink. But being strong doesn’t mean that you can’t be vulnerable, especially to an adult who knows how to manipulate your trust. We’re not mad at you. We’re not even disappointed. We just want to help.”

“I don’t need help,” Peter argues, narrowing his eyes. “Because that picture isn’t what it looks like.”

“Which picture, Peter? Which one isn’t what it looks like?” Mr. Stark butts in, gesturing aggressively at the hologram to pull up a slideshow of all the many pictures that have been captured of Spider-Man and Daredevil together.

The one that actually _is_ him from last night. The rooftop dancing. The ice cream. The flower. The ‘welcome back, I just got shot’ hug. The ‘oh my god you’re bleeding to death’ one. The ‘oh my god, I’ve got a punctured lung’ one. Time after time after time of them hanging out on rooftops, of Matt’s few and far between jiu jitsu lessons for him, of them having parkour races, of Matt smiling his stupid, dumb, charming smile at Peter, and of course the one of Wade and Matt getting it on.

“None of them-- none of them are what they look like!” Peter says, gesturing at the hologram to halt the procession of pictures. He doesn’t need to see more and he doesn’t need to put up with this.

Tony scoffs and laughs and catches another elbow from Colonel Rhodes which he pointedly ignores. “Okay, fine. Fine, let’s say I believe that for the sake of this conversation. What are they if they aren’t what they look like?”

“They just-- they’re friendship,” Peter tries.

“_Really?_” Tony says with the voice of someone who was just issued a challenge of the highest magnitude. It’s scathing, and it makes Peter want to cry just a little.

“Yeah, really,” Peter replies because he isn’t about to back down.

“This one?” The dancing.

“He was teaching me how to dance the night before that charity event you made me attend. You know, like a good _friend_ would.”

“This one?” The rose.

“Someone gave it to me for helping them. It felt rude to throw it away, but I couldn’t keep it, so I passed it off to him. He used it to half blind a guy.”

“This one?” The ‘you’re back!’ hug.

“He’s my _friend_ and I was happy to see him,” Peter replies.

“Does him being your friend explain why you took your suit off?” Tony hisses viciously, and although Peter knows the anger isn’t aimed at him that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. Or any less wildly confusing.

“_What?_”

“May told me you came home that night with your suit all messed up because you ‘put it back on too fast’. She says it wasn’t like that when you left,” Tony replies, and Peter’s shocked. “Ergo you took it off with Daredevil after you climbed him like a damn tree!” He gestures to get back to the ‘you’re back!’ hug.

“When did May tell you that?” he asks. May and Tony_ talk?_ _Since when?!_

“Or what about this one?” Tony asks, bulldozing right through Peter’s question as he pulls up the ice cream one. “Or this one? Or this one? Or this one?!” Tony’s cycling through the pictures too rapidly for Peter to offer an explanation. 

“I can explain all of them!” Peter shouts, the frustration of not being heard winning out over his desperation to keep his composure.

“No you can’t! Because there is no explanation! Peter he’s _using_ you! This is exactly what I was worried about when you first started working with him!” Tony spits back venomously.

“He’s not using me! He’s not doing anything to me! He was my mentor, now he’s my friend, and that’s it!” Peter argues, some part of himself contemplating how much better he’s gotten at standing up to Mr. Stark while every other part is either cowering or spitting venom.

“Oh yeah? Then why the hell did I walk in on a conversation between the two of you about how he ‘doesn’t fuck everyone’ and Deadpool asking who you _two_ were welcoming to the club?!” Tony snaps.

Peter’s blood runs cold as he tries to think of any other horribly timed comments like that he’s let slip in front of Mr. Stark. “Oh my god, it was a joke, Mr. Stark! Daredevil’s easy and I was making a joke about it! Deadpool was talking about who the two of _them_ were welcoming to the club! Not me!”

“He’s an adult! You shouldn’t know anything about his sex life at all! Besides-- you said he could treat you like an adult! Like that was the one thing he could do for you that I couldn’t!” Tony argues back.

“I meant he treats me like an equal! That he doesn’t talk down to me! Not that we’re having sex!” Peter snaps, his cold blood suddenly boiling. “What the hell is wrong with you, Tony?! He’s a better mentor to me than you ever were, so you have to go around accusing him of being a pedophile? Do you know what he does to pedophiles? The only time I’ve ever seen him really lose his shit was on a pedophile! He almost killed the guy and I had to _literally_ drag him off once the creep started having a seizure! Fuck you! What the fuck is your damage that you think any adult I’m friends with is trying to fuck me! Projecting a little, aren’t we?” Peter sneers, and instantly regrets it. That was too much. That was too defensive. That was a horrible accusation, and completely out of nowhere. It’s the same accusation that Tony is leveling against Matt.

All three adults look truly shocked by that particularly barbed, nasty defense, but it’s already out in the air and Peter isn’t going to get it back, so he might as well double down on it.

“You invite Colonel Rhodes and Mr. Barton to come to this meeting so you’d be sure and remember to keep your fuckin’ hands off of me? Is that why we’re here? Can’t trust yourself to look at softcore porn of who you think is me if you’re alone?!” It’s vicious and horrible and he says it regardless.

“What the fuck! Is it a fucking crime to try and keep you from getting molested?!” Mr. Stark snaps once he’s done being shocked into silence by Peter’s accusation.

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re about a decade late to the party on that one!” Peter snaps viciously. “Fuck everyone for saying that Daredevil and I are together! Fuck Daredevil for not taking Deadpool back to his place before they did that! Fuck whoever took the picture! Fuck whoever posted it! And fuck _you!_” He turns around immediately and heads to leave the room, but just as he gets to the door he spins back around. “If any of you so much as _looks for him_, I’ll make you fucking regret it.” It’s scary. It’s feral. It’s something Matt would say, and Peter continues following in his mentor’s dramatic footsteps as he sweeps out of the room and back to the elevator.

When he’s back down on the street, Peter pulls out his phone with shaking hands and dials Matt’s number. To talk about what happened that morning, to talk about what happened just then, to talk about how bad he feels for saying those things, Jesus did he actually accuse Mr. Stark of being into him. He doesn’t know what he wants to say, just that he wants to say it to Matt.

It doesn’t end up mattering what he was going to say when the call goes to voicemail. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings (SPOILER ALERT)  
\- A character recalls being molested as a child  
\- A character is accused of being a pedophile repeatedly
> 
> I know this was a tough chapter with tough themes, but I tried to handle it as well as I could. Please leave feedback in the form of comments and kudos.


	6. Me, My Thoughts, and I.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He snapped at May. He accused Tony of being a pedophile for fuck’s sake. He didn’t mean any of it, but with the things he’s been saying today and the residual irritation verging on anger that he feels towards Matt for the whole situation has all the makings of yet another explosive fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am posting this on my iPhone 5 in a car, so I'm hoping it's posting correctly. If the formatting is different I'll go back and fix it I promise. Until then, happy Thanksgiving and a huge thanks to tupacase, author of the incredible "You Will Still Be be Here Tomorrow But Your Dreams May Not" for betaing this chapter!
> 
> Check end notes for trigger warnings please!

The phone call going to voicemail is… concerning to say the least. Peter can count the number of times that Matt hasn’t picked up his calls on one hand. Two times—well, now three. Matt has missed a call from him three times in, what did the article say? Oh yeah, nearly eight months of working together. Eight months, three missed calls, and God only knows how many answered calls. Hence why saying he’s concerned is a bit of an understatement.

Matt’s apartment is a few blocks away—his office is even closer. Peter could go check on him, but…

But who knows what he’d end up saying to Matt.

He snapped at May. He accused Tony of being a pedophile for fuck’s sake. He didn’t mean any of it, but with the things he’s been saying today and the residual irritation verging on anger that he feels towards Matt for the whole situation has all the makings of yet another explosive fight—something he  _ really  _ doesn’t want.

Yeah, telling Matt off would be incredibly satisfying in the short run, but it isn’t something that Peter would want to deal with the long term consequences of. Don’t get it wrong; he’s still pissed, but his slightly more empathetic side has started to come back to the surface.

Matt just got outed. Peter assumes most of the people who are friends with Matt know he isn’t straight, and he’s positive that everyone who knows that he’s Daredevil knows he’s… whatever his orientation is,  _ considering how many of them he’s slept with _ a nasty part of Peter’s brain adds on. He winces internally at that proof that he really doesn’t need to be talking to Matt face-to-face yet. So people who know Matt know he’s not straight. But people who don’t know the connection between Matt Murdock and Daredevil didn’t know that Hell’s Kitchen’s hero was gay.

For the most part, a lot of people are pretty accepting of that now. Homophobia isn’t as much of a thing as it used to be, not here at least—people at school don’t get bullied for that. People get bullied (and rightfully so) for being  _ homophobic _ . But that’s high school. The rest of the world isn’t as accepting. Peter read the tweets in that article. People acting like Daredevil won’t be able to keep them safe anymore, that because he’s gay he must be a predator, that he deserves to be killed for being gay.

A large part of Peter’s mind still falls firmly in the “you should’ve kept it in your pants if you didn’t want this going public” category of thinking, but the longer the topic stays on his mind, the more he starts to feel sorry for Matt and the repercussions he’s going to face. Not to mention, Peter’s pretty sure that it can’t feel too good to be accused of having sex with a minor and then having no course of action to defend himself without outing himself (and Peter) in a whole new meaning of the word.

Peter glances up and realizes that his feet have already carried him past the subway station, and rather than turn around he just keeps walking. It’ll give him more time to think before he has to face anyone again.

After about thirty seconds of consciously aware walking, the feeling that Peter’s been doing his best to hold back comes crashing down on him like a tsunami: regret.

Sure, he regrets accusing Tony of being into him. That was… not great. Not only was it an awful thing to say, it was so defensive that Tony might take it as some sort of convoluted proof that he really is in a relationship with Matt. But that isn’t what the regret is about. No, the regret is for a different barbed comment he’d fired at Tony, for the shock value if nothing else.

_ “ _ _ What the fuck! Is it a fucking crime to try and keep you from getting molested?!”  _

_ _

_ “Hate to break it to you, but you’re about a decade late to the party on that one!” _

_ You’re about a decade late to the party on that one! _

_ _

_ You’re about a decade late to the party on that one! _

Peter can’t stop the endless loop those words are running in his head.  He told Mr. Stark. He  _ told _ him. The thing that Peter planned on taking to his grave, and he told it to none other than Tony Stark—a man who wouldn’t know the definition of private if it broke his door and called him a pedophile.

Peter likes not knowing what happened to Skip. Well, he’d like it better if he had no idea who Skip was, but as things are, he finds comfort in not knowing. It’s a Schrödinger’s cat sort of scenario. He could look him up, find out if he’s in prison, if he’s dead, if he’s escaped from jail and fled the country. Not knowing if he’s back on the streets, not knowing if he’s getting to live a normal life, not knowing if he’s even a registered sex offender, not knowing if he’s had his record sealed since he was a minor when it happened, not knowing if he’s got kids. Peter takes what little comfort he can get in not knowing for a fact that any of those things are true, and he knows now that Mr. Stark is going to find out every last detail.

Who knows what he’ll do with those details. If Skip’s dead then maybe he’ll try to offer that information to Peter as a source of comfort. If he’s living out his life, unburdened by his crimes, then Mr. Stark will rage and seethe and try to change that out of some sort of misplaced sense of duty to do right by Peter. But that isn’t what Peter wants, and it isn’t what he needs. What he needs is to move past it, to forget it again. Being completely honest with himself, he probably needs therapy, but he did that whole song and dance for three years as a kid, and now he’s not sure he can actually talk to a therapist considering the whole Spider-Man thing. Since that isn’t an option he has, Peter wants to live on in ignorance, and he isn’t sure if Tony would respect that wish regardless of how clear he makes it.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts once again, this time by the feeling of his phone buzzing against his thigh. Peter reaches into his pocket and pulls his phone out to see a notification from Instagram.

_ ned.leeds: _ holy shit dude just woke up. This is crazy. Are you okay?

_ No, probably not, _ Peter thinks.

_ You: _ yeah I’m good, it’s just annoying that may doesn’t believe me about it. neither does mr stark.

_ ned.leeds: _ oh man I’m sorry. anything I can do???

_ You: _ nah it’s okay. I can manage it

Peter slips his phone back into his pocket, doing his best to drown out the torrent of worries as he heads home.

He can hear the sound of May talking on the phone before he even opens the door, but the second he slides his key into the lock the apartment is plunged into silence. A deep, fortifying breath and Peter pushes the door open, not at all ready for what’s on the other side, but ready enough to fake it.

May is perched on the edge of the couch as though she’d flung herself down on it the second she heard Peter—her posture is about as rigid as a mannequin, and the look on her face is just as unreadable.

The sight makes Peter irrationally angry, a feeling which only builds as May sits there in silence while he toes off his shoes by the door.

“Sorry to interrupt your call,” he says. “You on the phone with Mr. Stark again?” There’s a hint of a sneer coming through in his words despite his best efforts to keep things level.

“Is that where you went?” May asks softly. “To talk to Tony?”

“Yeah, and good thing I did considering he was plotting Daredevil’s murder by the time I got there,” Peter snaps. “No thanks to you telling him shit out of context and getting him even more fired up.”

“Peter…”

“No! I don’t wanna hear it! Save it for your therapist, May!”

Peter aims one last glare in her direction before heading to his bedroom. He hesitates in the doorway for just a second, his eyes level with a higher point on the wall than they had been as a child, but on the same wall nonetheless. He shakes off the second of hesitation, though he’s sure that May sees it, before shutting the door, probably a lot louder than strictly necessary, or even reasonable. With a barrier between himself and his aunt, Peter lets his shoulders drop and his backpack thump to the ground as he slumps against the door. He feels weak all over, and an oppressive tiredness is pushing him down, down, down.

He manages to coax his feet into carrying him over to his bed which he crawls into, shifting restlessly on top of the squishy lump of covers leftover from the shitshow that he was woken up to that morning. Was it really only that morning?

It feels so much longer.

Peter shifts around until the matted pile of blankets isn’t digging into his side too uncomfortably before closing his eyes. Because his day has decided that the only place to go from here is down, sleep refuses to come. Not even a light doze that would leave him feeling more tired than before when it was over—his brain won’t even afford him that one luxury. Instead he finds himself staring at the inside of his eyelids and violently pushing his thoughts into a box with a broken latch.

He can only take so much of that before he needs a distraction to serve as a torch holding back the majority of the darkness, even if a few tendrils still creep their way in.

He finds that distraction exactly where a child of the twenty-first century would be expected to find it: his cellphone.

He manages to scroll through art on his Instagram explore page expressionlessly for a solid nine minutes before he stumbles across a drawing of none other than himself and Matt. He pauses on the image to read the caption in the hope that it may be platonic art, but nope. Of course not. Unfortunately, that short pause got it into Instagram’s algorithm that he  _ wants _ to see more content like that. Before Peter knows it, every other picture is of Spider-Man or Daredevil or Spider-Man  _ and _ Daredevil.

They’re pictures on a screen, posted by people he’ll likely never speak to or even see, but it inflicts a visceral hurt and tears begin to well up in his eyes as he stares one image down. It hurts—on more levels than Peter knew he could feel pain on, in more ways than he thought he could feel, too.

This isn’t the all-consuming black hole of grief and mourning he’d felt for Ben; it’s different.

This pain is slimy, this pain is alive. It isn’t an immovable cosmic force; it’s a sort of cognizant sludge, sliding through his veins, deeper and deeper, biding its time in its purposeful crawl towards his heart. He can feel it everywhere, in his hands, in his feet, schlepping straight to his core and constricting all the way there.

Peter draws his knees to his chest, his pillow to his face, and cries into it. These aren’t the small tears that have been threatening to slip from his eyes at inopportune moments throughout the day. These are heaving, caustic sobs that are tearing him apart as the sludge binds his insides tighter. It hurts, God does it  _ hurt _ . His eyes are burning, his throat is tight, his head is pounding, and lungs are screaming.

It doesn’t matter that May can hear him crying— when she knocks on the door with a soft, “Peter?” one hoarse, “Go away!” is all that it takes to drive her off.

Peter cries.

He cries and he sobs and he screams and he cries until his eyes are sore and his tears are gone, and it’s still not enough to soothe his soul. He’s in pain, and he’s hurting, and what makes the pain exponentially worse is that he’s been inflicting it on others, on people he cares about.

How he’s been acting towards May cuts him the deepest of all his vindictive actions. She cares about him so,  _ so _ much and he’s been hurting her for her troubles. She remembers a time when she wasn’t careful enough about who she let him be around alone and he got hurt, and she’s devastated by the possibility that she might’ve let that happen to him again.

Dragging himself out of his bed, Peter winces with every step that makes his head throb until he reaches May’s bedroom door. He hesitates for a moment before knocking gently.

“Come in,” comes May’s soft and slightly hesitant reply.

Peter opens the door with his own slight hesitation, and before he can even say anything he feels that telltale burn in his eyes yet again.

May’s sitting in her bed with her glasses on and a book in her hand. The blankets are pulled up over her lap, and a small heater is whirring away on the floor to her left. The room is cluttered in a way that Peter has always found comfort in, with all varieties of knickknacks and tchotchke interspersed with the general detritus of everyday life. There’s a mound of throw pillows pushed to what was Ben’s side of the bed along with a couple of throw blankets near the foot. Him is sprawled out across (and halfway dangling off) the cedar chest at the foot of the bed just beside a never used sewing kit inherited from some relative.

The soft glow of the lamp from May’s bedside table reflects from her eyes, and Peter can see the moment that tears well up in them.

“Hi baby…” she says, and that’s all Peter needs to reactivate the fountain in his eyes.

May starts to get up, probably to comfort him, but Peter holds out his hand in the universal gesture of  _ stop _ .

“I’m not crying because Daredevil hurt me. Or did anything with me,” he says.

May hesitates a bit before speaking. “Okay. Do you want to tell me why you  _ are _ crying?”

_ Because I was awful to you. Because I told Mr. Stark about what happened when I was a kid. Because I have to think about what happened when I was a kid. Because. Because. Because. _

_ _

“Not right now,” he says quietly, bringing his hand back to his side.

“Alright, sweetheart,” May says, taking a few steps toward him. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Peter doesn’t say anything, just walks straight into her already open arms.

May wraps her arms tightly around him, and the small machinations of her rubbing his back get the tears flowing even more freely, but there’s something different about them. It’s more like he’s bleeding the pain out than like he’s having his essence ripped out. Everything still hurts, but the tears bring relief rather than adding on to his hurt.

It might be ten minutes, it might be an hour; Peter has no idea, but he finally pulls his face away from where he’s absolutely soaked May’s sweater with tears.

“Thanks,” he says, turning his head away slightly and sniffling.

“You don’t need to thank me, baby,” she replies with that soothing, gentle tone that’s always been there to calm Peter down for as long as he can remember.

“I just… I was  _ so _ mean to you. You were trying to help—even though there was nothing happening, but I was so, so mean to you. And you’re still trying to make me feel better,” he whispers, curling in on himself and wrapping his arms around his center.

“Hey now,” May says, smoothing her hands over his shoulders. “I’m  _ always _ going to be there for you. You snapped at me, yeah, but you’re a teenager. I mean, you’re not an average teenager, but you’re still a teenager. You’re gonna get pissed off at me, I’m sure this isn’t the last time that’s gonna happen. I just… I just want to keep you safe. I just want to be able to look out for you.”

Peter swallows hard around the lump in his throat. “I know. I know you’re trying to help, but you weren’t helping. He’s my friend, okay? Nothing more. He’s one of my closest friends and it hurts so much to hear you talk about him like he’s… like he’s a monster.”

“I know you spend a lot of time with him,” May says, and Peter tenses up, readying himself for what he’s sure will come next. “But you haven’t ever really told me about him. What’s he like?”

It might be a scheme. May might be trying to figure out more about him so that she can give every little detail to Tony and he can hunt Matt down. But… she might be trying to be understanding too. It’s fine—Peter can talk about him without giving away and details that could out his identity.

“He’s… nice,” Peter tries.

“Yeah?” May guides Peter to sit on the edge of her bed and sits beside him, the cat choosing to abandon his position on the cedar chest and curl up beside Peter.

“The first time I met him, he saved me from getting shot and offered to teach me how to do the whole hero gig without getting killed. I was… I dunno, starstruck? Daredevil was the first of us powered people to actually make a name for himself on the street— to be a hero for this city and this city alone. He helped me realize that I could save people with the abilities I got, even before I’d ever met him. “

“So you looked up to him?” May asks softly.

“I idolized him,” Peter corrects. “And I kept idolizing him for a while after we actually met, but eventually I realized that he’s just… a person. He fucks up sometimes. He gets pissed off sometimes. Sometimes he disappears for a while. Apparently he’s put his friends through hell time and time again, but they stick around because they know he’s worth it. He’s a good person. He keeps track of the stray cats in Hell’s Kitchen and he protects the people and he does it without killing anyone. He tries to be a good role model, but… I’ve also seen the bad parts of him.” If he says nothing but good things about Matt, then May will still think he idolizes him, that he sees no wrong Matt can do. Maybe if he says a few of the bad things it’ll give him more credibility. Like that essay Matt helped him with—use all his rhetorical appeals.

“He gets angry—not at me, but at the world, and at people who do bad things. One time when we were out, Daredevil was looking for a little kid who had gotten snatched, and I was helping. We’d split up, and Daredevil found the guy first—turned out he was the kid’s teacher from school. When I caught up to them, he was… he was beating the shit out of this guy. He wasn’t just subduing him for the police, he was going to kill him. He’d beat him until he couldn’t get up and then he just kept kicking him and kicking him until the guy started having a seizure and I dragged Daredevil off of him.

“That was the worst time,” Peter continues, “but not the only time. The only thing that’s consistent is he only loses it like that on pedophiles. Also, he drinks too much. He tries to hide it, but whenever we’re at his apartment there are always liquor bottles in the recycling bin and lots of beer in the fridge and a half drunk bottle of something strong on one of the counters. And the bottles are always different, so I can tell it’s not that he just doesn’t take out the recycling. And…” It’s awkward to talk about, but Peter feels like he has to mention it. “He sleeps around a ton. I know that it’s his body, his choice what to do with it, but I guess I just worry about him. It’s not like he’s ever talked about it with me, but him and Wade are a thing, and Wade has no filter and works with us a lot so he’ll say stuff to Daredevil about it. I know he has issues, but he’s a good person, and I think I’d be dead by now if I’d been doing this on my own.”

May looks at him thoughtfully. “You weren’t alone before Daredevil though. You had Tony.”

Peter actually scoffs at that, though the blotchy face and teary eyes probably didn’t lend themselves to making him look tough. “He wasn’t there for me. He used me to fight his battles and gave me a cool suit and then ditched me. He didn’t answer my calls or even return my messages. Daredevil has only ever missed three of my calls. Three. And I call him all the time.

“I know that parents are supposed to protect their kids and shelter them from certain things, and I know that since I am who I am, there are a lot of things that happen that you can’t try and protect me from. But if you think an adult is taking advantage of me, that’s something that you  _ can _ and  _ should _ protect me from. And I think maybe because there are so many things you can’t protect me from, and…” Peter pauses as he fists one hand in the comforter and strokes the cat with his other, “and this is something you couldn’t protect me from in the past, you were more, I dunno, eager? to protect me from it this time. But there’s no protecting to be done. Daredevil is my friend, and that’s all. I’d tell you if it was something more. You know I would.”

May looks to him with red-rimmed eyes of her own, and this time Peter manages to hold her gaze.

“You’re right that there are a lot of things I can’t protect you from. I can’t protect you from supervillains. I can’t protect you from gangsters. And in the past, I didn’t protect you from someone who wanted to hurt you—at least not soon enough. After that I was so,  _ so _ careful. We didn’t leave you with a sitter for  _ months _ . The legality is questionable at best, but Ben did background checks on the babysitters we hired after that. I knew that I’d do anything to protect you after that, but then you told me about Spider-Man and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to protect you from everything. I was so thankful that you had people looking out for you, even if I did freak out about some of them at first. I was thankful that you had people looking out for you where I couldn’t, and then the news broke that you were in a relationship with one of them and I just… I couldn’t believe that I’d let that happen to you again. I wanted him to suffer, and I put that above listening to you. I’m sorry for that. I’m still… confused about some of the things that are coming out. The pictures and the things people are saying they’ve heard or seen, but I’ll put my faith in you over strangers on the internet and on the news. I believe you,” May says, and Peter feels like he can breathe for the first time all day.

“Thank you—I just… people acting like  _ that _ was happening to me… it drags so much up. Thank you for listening—”

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen sooner,” May says softly, pulling Peter into a hug.

Peter hugs her back for just a moment before standing back up from the bed.

“I’m gonna go check in with Wade to see how M—Daredevil’s handling everything,” he says softly.

“Alright, baby. I’m gonna go to sleep, but wake me up if you need anything,” May replies.

“Okay.” Peter has no intention of putting May through any more tears today, so he knows he won’t wake her up; she knows that too.

After getting back to his room, Peter picks his phone up from its place amongst the wad of blankets on his bed. He checks his notifications and sees an Instagram message from MJ which he checks instantly.

_ mj.ones: _ that’s pretty rough. But thanks for telling me what’s really going on.

_ _

He types out a response quickly enough.

_ You: _ I know you like to stay in the loop

With that addressed, Peter goes over to his texts and clicks Wade’s name; they’ve texted recently enough that no scrolling even needs to be done to get to it.

_ 6:47 PM _

_ You: _ hey Wade. I tried to call Matt earlier but he didn’t answer and you said you’d call me back later. It’s later so I was wondering what’s up

Wade starts typing almost immediately, but it takes a while for a response to come through, especially with the way the three dots by his name keep disappearing and reappearing.

_ 6:51 PM _

_ Wade: _ hey kiddo. Everything’s going fine but you probably won’t be able to reach Matt for the next day or so.

Peter frowns slightly at that.

_ 6:52 PM _

_ You: _ did he have a drama queen moment and break his phone or something?

_ 6:54 PM _

_ Wade: _ something like that.

Peter doesn’t even sort of believe Wade, but he’s not going to pry. Maybe the two of them got into a fight over the whole situation.

That sets Peter on edge just a little; He knows that Wade and Matt aren’t dating, but there’s something more than typical friendship between them. Peter knows that there’s absolutely no blame to be placed on him in this situation, but if Matt and Wade… broke up over this then he’ll feel like shit regardless. Is breaking up even the right word for it? Because they aren’t in a relationship. Or are they?

Peter realizes that he’s never really contemplated on it past the fact that Matt and Wade sleep together. That’s what he knows, plain and simple. He knows that Matt sleeps with—or has slept with a number of other people. Peter doesn’t know where that sleeping around falls on the scope of when he and Wade first started their whatever-the-hell-it-is.

_ 7:01 PM _

_ You:  _ Wade?

_ 7:02 PM _

_ Wade: _ kid?

_ 7:02 PM _

_ You: _ Are you and Matt together?

_ 7:03 PM _

_ Wade: _ like presently? Yeah. we’re on his living room floor

Peter sighs and feels a blush rising to his cheeks as he types out his question.

_ 7:05 PM _

_ You: _ No are you like dating or something

The three dots appear.

The three dots disappear.

The cycle repeats.

_ 7:08 PM _

_ Wade: _ I don’t believe so

_ What the hell kind of answer is that? _ Peter thinks.

_ 7:09 PM _

_ You: _ What the hell kind of answer is that

_ 7:11 PM _

_ Wade: _ the kind of answer you’re getting

Peter huffs air out of his nose at that, but doesn’t try and push for a more tangible answer. Either Wade doesn’t want to share, he and Matt were dating and they broke up over this, or Wade isn’t entirely sure himself where their relationship falls. None of those are exactly comforting, but some are better than others.

Ignoring that entire line of questioning, Peter isn’t entirely sure he buys the “ _ everything’s fine _ ” either. If Matt’s not going to be available by phone for some indeterminate period of time, then something must be wrong.

Maybe he’s avoiding calls and texts from someone regarding the whole Daredevil/Spider-Man scenario.

Maybe he’s seeing someone who knows about the Daredevil thing and now they know he’s cheating on them.

Peter doesn’t like that last idea very much. He knows cheating is a shitty, shitty thing to do, and he’d like to think that Matt would never do that to anyone.

Well, the media does know that Nelson and Murdock, particularly Murdock, are Daredevil’s contacts in the legal system. Maybe they’re being harassed for details about their client’s _sordid_ _affair_.

Peter nods to himself at that one. That sounds reasonable.

With all the thoughts nicely sorted and organized in his head, and the headache from all the crying he’s done working its way back into Peter’s awareness, he decides it’s time to call it a night.

Untangling the wad of sheets and blankets from the center of his bed, Peter spreads them out somewhat neatly before crawling underneath. For a moment he contemplates getting his weighted blanket out from its place in the closet, but he decides against it. Sure, it’s only fifteen pounds—an almost entirely negligible weight to him now—but he’s not sure how great he’d deal with having weight pressing down on him. After all, he hasn’t even attempted to use the blanket since the whole Toomes-dropped-a-building-on-him situation. No telling if that would trigger a panic attack about some new and exciting trauma or not.

Instead he just closes his eyes and lets sleep wash over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings:  
Character continues to deal with the emotional effects of past childhood sexual abuse.


	7. A Mile in Everyone Else's Shoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've seen what effect this misconception is having on Peter's life. How about everyone else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Echo for betaing!!! You're awesome.
> 
> This chapter is long as hell and it was super hard to write; this is the third attempt at it. I hope you enjoy the change in perspective!
> 
> As always PLEASE check end notes for trigger warnings.

May Parker isn’t stupid. In fact, she’s anything but. She was never valedictorian, but she graduated within the top twenty of her class, both in high school and college—and nursing school was no walk in the park. She’s worked her way up in the world by being as smart and persistent as she is, but she’s also worked her way up by being kind.

May is a trusting person, and she wants nothing more than to trust Peter and believe that the whole thing with Daredevil really is just a huge misunderstanding. She loves her nephew dearly, and, aside from the whole teenage mutant vigilante thing, he’s never lied to her about anything important. She wants to believe him, but there are so many things that just don’t quite add up.

Peter adores Daredevil; she’s known this since the man first made a name for himself. In fact, she’s known since before then. Peter and Ned both used to spend way too much time scrolling through internet forums about superheroes in the city, and the first time he mentioned a masked man in Hell’s Kitchen to her was over a month before The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was ever officially reported on. The hero worship continued on for years, and May’s pretty sure she can pinpoint the moment Peter met his hero in real life.

She could  _ see _ the excitement radiating off of him in waves after he’d returned late from the Stark Internship, (and that’s a whole different can of worms to crack open) but he’d refused to say what it was about. The next day he’d been unable to shut up about Daredevil—asking her for her opinions on him, any stories she’d gotten from patients or coworkers, and a few days later whether or not she thought he had any abilities beyond that of a normal human. After another few weeks or so, he’d calmed down about Daredevil. He hardly mentioned him then, and when he did it was casual, almost in passing.

She’s grateful to Daredevil for what he’s done for Peter; there are very few people in this world who would take a bullet for someone they’d only just met, and according to Peter, Daredevil is one of them. He taught Peter how to handle himself in a fight, and he got Peter a support network that May could never have put together in a million years. Daredevil has done a lot for Peter, but May can’t help the suspicion she feels towards the man.

He’s a stranger, an adult man who spends a large amount of time breaking other people’s bones, and beating them into comas, and leaving permanent brain damage, and he’s suddenly been left with Peter, unsupervised. For almost eight months. She wishes Ben was here—that there was anyone she could ask for advice in this situation.

It’s not like the internet can offer her any help, either. May spends about twenty minutes in front of her keyboard on a parenting site, typing and retyping the situation into a text box. Too much information, and it’s obvious her child is a superhero. Too little, and it’s obvious what the answer would be.

_My sixteen-year-old child has been spending a large amount of time with a violent, adult man I don’t know for months. Recently I’ve seen pictures of my child and the man in questionable situations. My child says there’s not anything going on._ _Should I believe him?_

No, thank you. That’ll probably get CPS knocking on the door, which is the last thing either of them needs.

She can’t ask anyone for advice in this situation, because nobody has been in this situation before. She’s pioneering this element of parenting, and it’s not anything approaching easy.

Eventually, after a great deal of contemplation and tossing and turning May decides to just talk to Peter more about what’s going on. If he isn’t being honest, she’s sure she’ll be able to tell—so long as she keeps pushing.

Unfortunately, by the time she works up the nerve to head to Peter’s room, his window is unlocked and there’s a note on his desk declaring he’ll be gone all day ‘saving and serving the city’.

May sighs and worries her lip before going back to the drawing board on finding a solution for the situation she’s been thrust into.

* * *

Camila Bridges is aware of the current media frenzy surrounding Spider-Man. For some reason, the local hero had taken a liking to her a few weeks back, and now it seems every time she’s on duty the masked menace (as he’s been nicknamed by the Daily Bugle) is approaching her, either to dump his latest bad guy on her or just to say hi. She takes his bad guys and says hi, asks him how his day has gone and how his hero friends are doing. She’s aware of the fact he talks about Daredevil more than anyone else, so when it comes out that the two of them are in a relationship, she can’t say she’s all that surprised.

She’s in the precinct, just having dumped off her own bad guy, when Detective Rodriguez waves her over to his desk.

“Hey, Bridges,” he calls, lifting his phone up and shaking it slightly. “Take a look at this.”

Camila sighs and trudges over to his desk, preparing herself for whatever clickbait Facebook article he’s found this time.

“Webhead’s in a bad mood today,” he says out of nowhere, and Camila tilts her head a little in confusion.

“What?”

“Check it out,” he says, pressing play on the video already pulled up on his phone.

It’s shot on a cellphone camera at street level, though whoever is taking the video has their phone angled upward to get the streetlight they’re standing under in the shot. None other than Spider-Man is perched on the light—it’s not exactly an unusual thing for him to do. What is unusual is both the number of people gathered at the base of his perch and the tense, almost guarded way Spider-Man is holding himself.

_ “Hey, Spidey,” _ one of the people in the video calls, _ “how’s Daredevil doing?” _

The eyes on Spider-Man’s current suit don’t narrow like the ones on the old one did, but that doesn’t keep Camila from feeling the force of his glare anyway.

_ “I wouldn’t know! He’s ignoring my calls!”  _ comes Spider-Man’s obviously bitter response.

“ _ I’m… sorry, _ ” the voice that had asked the question in the first place says, sounding both confused and apologetic.

In reality, they’re probably just sorry for the answer they received.

Camila is nowhere near prepared for Spider-Man’s response to the apology.

_ “It’s fine. His fuckbuddy can’t play secretary forever—then again, maybe he’ll grow a pair and call me back before I have to bust down his door!” _

There’s a collective gasp from the crowd in the video, and Camila reflexively puts her own hand to her mouth. She’s never heard Spider-Man say anything that rude before. She doesn’t even think she’s ever heard him say anything stronger than ‘damn’.

_ _

_ “I… never mind _ ,” Spider-Man says, almost as if he’s taken aback by his own words, before swinging off.

A few more officers have gathered around in the time it took for the video to play through, and it seems like they’re all curious to hear her opinion on it.

“So, Spidey having relationship troubles?” Brenan asks from where he’s leaned against the edge of Rodriguez’s desk.

“Uh, it would appear so,” Camila answers. “Why are you asking me? We all saw the same video.”

“Yeah, but Webhead likes you,” Rodriguez chimes in, earning himself nods from Green and Nguyen.

“That doesn’t mean he talks to me about his boyfriend. Hell, I didn’t even know he had a boyfriend until it was all over the news. I’m his law enforcement contact—it’s not like we meet up and get coffee. I don’t know any more about him than you do,” Camila says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Wanna tell me why we’re having a party at Rodriguez’s desk?” asks a voice they all recognize and, to some degree, fear.

“No party here!” Brenan says before aiming a finger over his shoulder. “Yeah, just going back to my desk!”

Detective Bryant gives him a look which he then turns on the rest of them, including his slightly sheepish looking partner.

“Stop distracting the officers, Rodriguez,” he says.

Rodriguez rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say. That guy in room three ready for us yet?”

Camila excuses herself from the conversation and heads back to the door where her partner is patiently waiting for her.

“Hey,” he says, offering her a cup of coffee which she eagerly takes. “What was the hold up?”

Camila sighs and sips the coffee, ignoring the way it sort of burns her tongue. “Everyone wanted to know my opinion on Spider-Man’s relationship. It’s like they think I know more about him than they do.”

“Well… don’t you?”

Camila turns a look on him. “Joseph, you’re there every time I interact with him. Does it look like he’s penciling me in for drinks so we can talk about boys?”

Joseph puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender and starts heading for their car. “Hey, I’m just saying. It’s a miracle he talks to you at all if he and Daredevil are a thing. The Devil hates cops with a passion.”

Joe’s right about that one. No cop in the city is more than two degrees of separation away from another cop who’s had a bad interaction with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Some have been personally hit for getting in his way, but for the most part, officers only ever get harsh words thrown at them. The stories usually end with Daredevil doing his freaky disappearing act or being dragged off by one of his many superpowered friends.

It’s weird that a guy like  _ that  _ is dating ball-of-sunshine Spider-Man, but then again, Camila has no idea if Daredevil’s personality is an act he puts on to create fear in whoever has to deal with him. He could be a perfectly nice guy who works a nine-to-five, even if the idea of Daredevil sitting in an office cubicle with broken ribs from the previous night’s activities is more than a little bit comedic.

Their patrol is uninteresting for the next couple of hours until they get called in to deal with the aftermath of a bank robbery stopped by their local hero.

When they arrive on scene, there are a few other cops already there, taking statements from the hostages and civilians that witnessed the incident. Joseph heads off almost immediately to join in with taking statements, but Camila hesitates a moment longer.

At the outskirts of the crime scene, a rather familiar red and black figure is lurking on the ledge of a building. He appears to be observing the scene below, and normally Camila would let him do that uninterrupted. But today…

“Hey, Spidey,” she calls once she’s almost directly beneath his perch.

He starts before glancing down at her. “Oh, hey Officer Bridges.”

“It’s not official, and it won’t be able to be used in court, but mind if I get your statement anyway? For my own peace of mind?” she asks, shaking her notebook in his direction.

Spider-Man hesitates for a minute before climbing down the wall and standing a few feet away from her. “I guess. I don’t know if it’ll really help anything though.”

They go over the details of the robbery—when it started, when Spider-Man got involved, when it ended, how many perpetrators, and how many hostages. It’s a simple enough conversation, but by the end of it, Camila finds herself even more worried about Spider-Man.

He seems… despondent. This isn’t the bubbly, cheerful, chatty hero she’s gotten to know. It’s obvious that something is wrong, and after a bit of steeling herself, she decides to confront this.

“Are you… is everything okay?” she asks softly, and this seems to catch Spider-Man a bit off-guard.

“What do you mean?” he asks, tilting his head at her.

“You seem upset. Is something wrong?” she asks a little more deliberately.

Spider-Man looks at her for a minute before his shoulders sag and he nods.

Camila glances around and sees that the rest of the officers still have their hands full. She also spots a place out of sight around the corner of the building they’re standing beside.

“Come here,” she says softly, heading around the corner.

She glances over her shoulder to make sure that Spider-Man is following, and it hurts her heart a little to see the way he looks so defeated.

“Do you wanna tell me what’s going on?” she asks.

Spider-Man doesn’t say anything to this.

Camila sighs. “Alright, well judging off the video I saw this morning, I’m guessing this is about Daredevil, yeah?” She knows she’s right when Spider-Man tenses up instantly at the mention of his boyfriend. “What’s wrong? Are you two fighting?”

“We’re not even dating,” Spider-Man says finally, and that’s a bit of a surprise.

Those pictures looked pretty serious, and she never really thought that sweet, rather innocent Spider-Man would be one for a casual affair.

Spider-Man must catch on to what she’s thinking because he shakes his head. “We’ve never done anything. He’s just my friend, but…”

“Take your time,” Camila prompts gently.

Spider-Man nods and she can see him shake a little as he inhales. “We’re not in a relationship. We don’t want to be. We aren’t interested in each other like that. The picture is of him and Deadpool. I think they might’ve been dating, but I don’t really know. They’re together a lot, and they’re… well, you saw the picture.”

She can practically hear the blush in Spider-Man’s voice.

“Does it bother you that people think you’re together?” she asks, and Spider-Man immediately nods.

“ _ Yes. _ And… and I think it bothers him too because ever since the pictures got out, he won’t talk to me. He won’t answer my calls,” Spider-Man says, and he sounds so damn hurt that it makes Camila’s heart clench.

“Is it possible he’s just busy?” she asks softly, and Spider-Man shakes his head.

“He never misses my calls. He  _ promised _ he wouldn’t, and he didn’t. But after all this, he stopped answering. I thought… I don’t know, maybe he was busy or he left his phone somewhere, but this morning he declined my call. Didn’t even let it ring out. Just declined it after three rings. He’s  _ never _ done that. He  _ wouldn’t _ do that.” Spider-Man’s voice breaks on the ‘ _ wouldn’t _ ’, his fists clenched at his sides.

Camila is suddenly struck by the fact that Spider-Man is crying. Holy shit, she made Spider-Man cry.

“Er—” she starts, but she’s interrupted before she can say anything.

“You believe me, right? That I’m not dating him? That I haven’t slept with him?” Spider-Man asks more than a little desperately.

Camila nods, because what reason would the kid have to lie?

Her brain screeches to a halt.

The kid.

The kid.

_ The kid _ .

Her subconscious must’ve picked up on everything she noticed but never fully processed. Everything she thought she knew about Spider-Man falls to pieces and starts rapidly recategorizing itself. The times of day he’s out and about don’t work with a typical job schedule, or even a typical college student’s schedule; they line up with a high school schedule. He must be on summer break right now though. His voice is high pitched, and until just then she never thought much about it. He’s rather short, and he’s pretty skinny too. And he’s desperately seeking her approval, her validation of what’s obviously bothering him. Because she’s an adult. Probably one of the few adults he interacts with who doesn’t know his age.

“Officer Bridges..?” he asks, probably having noticed the way she went still and stiff at her realization.

Keep it cool. Keep it calm. This isn’t hard evidence, no matter how much she suspects that she’s right, she can’t just blurt it out. Even though she’s sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’s right, making it known that she can tell he’s underage is only going to make Spider-Man flip out worse and probably run. Something she desperately doesn’t want him to do because he’s just a kid and—Christ, if he really is in a relationship with Daredevil, she’s going to take a few other officers and go hunting in Hell’s Kitchen.

“You  _ do _ believe me, don’t you?” Spider-Man asks again, and this time Camila forces a verbal response.

“Of course I believe you,” she says, plastering on a smile. “I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

The relief Spider-Man must be feeling is palpable, and Camila can’t help but panic a little bit more at the thought of this person being a kid. Oh, Jesus, he told her that he’d been ‘ _ exploded _ ’ once upon a time and she didn’t realize he was still in high school? There’s the answer as to why she hasn’t made detective yet.

“Thanks,” Spider-Man says softly. “People keep not believing me about it. And it’s scary cause if they don’t believe me then they’re gonna go after Daredevil and—” he slaps a hand to his mouth to cut himself off. “Uh, anyway. I gotta go—there’s a um—yeah, crime.” And with that, he’s shooting a web up to the nearest building and swinging off to face God-knows-what dangers.

Camila is standing there with her forehead pressed into one of her hands when Joseph comes around the corner a few minutes later.

“Thought I saw you wander over here—where’d Webhead go?” he asks before taking in her posture. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Camila says instantly. “Let’s just get this over with.”

* * *

May Parker is a smart woman. She may not be able to navigate the criminal underground of the city with as much ease as her nephew, but a few questions to the right patients during her shift earlier that day have led her here, to the dirty sidewalk in front of a bar with a sign proclaiming it to be “Sister Margaret’s Home for Wayward Girls”. She can hear loud rock music spilling out onto the street, along with a few shouts and hollers that it doesn’t quite manage to block out.

A pair of drunken men come slamming out of the bar just as May is about to enter, and she has to push herself close up against the wall to avoid being plowed over by them. The cloud of smoke that follows them out makes her cringe, but she takes a deep breath and pulls the door open anyway.

Inside is the quintessential dive bar. There are mismatched tables and barstools on a sticky, grimy floor. The lighting comes from a dozen mismatched and cracked fixtures, and the different wattages reflect off of the many brightly colored flyers stuck all over the walls. The clientele look exactly like she’d expected them to: rough. She isn’t oblivious to all the stares being turned on her and the hushing of chatter as she approaches the bar.

There’s a man behind the bar with long hair and glasses, just like had been described to her by one of the chattier patients she’d asked about where in the city to hire a scarred up hitman named Wade. Another deep breath and she comes to stand in front of him.

“You Jack Hammer?” she asks, trying her best not to let the nerves she’s feeling show too obviously.

“Might be,” he says with a shrug. “Who’s asking? The PTA?”

That gets a snort from the few people sitting at the bar close enough to hear it, and May narrows her eyes.

“I’ve got business with Wade Wilson,” she says. “Heard I could find him here.”

The man who might be Jack Hammer raises an eyebrow at her. “What sorta business you got with him?”

“That’s between him and me. Now mind telling me how I can get a hold of him?” May says. This is a hell of a lot farther than she thought she’d get. Now what?

“Listen, you tell me a probable reason why a civvie like you has business with Wade, and  _ maybe _ I’ll give him your name.”

May bites her lip. Fine. “I’m here to clear up whatever the hell is going on between Deadpool and Daredevil before Tony Stark kills both of them.” A bit of an exaggeration, but she has a good poker face and she knows how to wear it. If that doesn’t get him to bite, she has no idea what will.

Might-be-Jack-Hammer’s eyes widen a little bit. It looks like she played her cards right with namedropping Wade Wilson’s alter-ego.

“Stay here. I’ll make a call,” almost-definitely-Jack-Hammer says before pulling out his cellphone and walking a few feet away. May can still hear everything he’s saying, but she’s not about to let him know that.

“Hey, where are you?... There’s some MILF here, says she has business with you about Daredevil and Spider-Man… Yeah, also mentioned that Iron Man’s gonna kill both of you…” Jack Hammer says into the phone, pausing for responses that May can’t even hope to try and make out.

“Hey,” he finally calls over at her, “your name Parker?”

May nods in response.

“Yeah,” Jack Hammer says. He makes a few agreeable noises into the phone and then hangs up before coming back over to where May is standing awkwardly.

Rather than saying anything, he starts making a drink behind the bar. It takes him about a minute, and once he finishes he looks back at May.

“He said he’ll be here in an hour. He also said to give you this.” He sets the drink on the bar in front of May.

May raises her eyebrow at the shot.

“A blowjob?”

Jack Hammer shrugs. “He’s a freak. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” May replies, doing her best to ignore the drink and everything going on around her.

After witnessing the short conversation with Jack, the other patrons of Sister Margaret’s seem to accept May as someone who is supposed to be there. Although she’s still getting the occasional strange look from some people, she’s no longer worried that she’s going to get jumped and kicked out. Twenty minutes or so later, she pulls out her phone to shoot Peter a text telling him she won’t be home until later, that she’s out with some friends. It’s a lie, and she feels more than a little guilty about it, considering she’s out trying to determine whether or not Peter’s been lying to her. She hates being a hypocrite, but desperate times and all.

As the minutes trod on, May politely refuses the multiple drink offers she gets from a whole host of men (and a few women), turning them down with a smile and a line about how she’s married. She gets called a bitch a few times, but for the most part, people seem to respect it.

Just about an hour after the bartender’s call to Wade, a familiar and terribly scarred face walks through the door.

* * *

While babysitting an angsty Matt, just about the last thing Wade expected was a call from Weasel. The very last thing he expected was for that call to be because the kid’s aunt showed up looking for him. He’ll have to talk to Peter about leaking that sort of information to civvies.

_ You never told him about Sister Margaret’s. _

That’s  _ right. _ He never mentioned the bar to Peter. Hell, for all the kid’s chattering on about his own friends, Wade’s never even told Peter about Weasel.

Anyway, back on track: the kid’s aunt somehow hunted him down and wants to talk. That can’t bode well.

“Hey,” Wade says, crouching down to tap Matt’s forehead since the diva decided the best place to stew in his misery is the floor beside his bed. “I gotta go run damage control. You good on your own?”

Matt smacks Wade’s hand away. “I’m not a fucking kid.”

“Then stop acting like an angsty thirteen-year-old and tell me if you’re okay with being alone for a couple of hours,” Wade says, poking Matt again and getting his hand shoved away again.

“I’m  _ fine _ . I don’t need you babysitting me in the first place,” Matt sneers, and Wade suddenly wishes he’d agreed to Foggy’s spray-bottle-for-when-Matt’s-being-a-bitch idea.

“No parties while I’m gone,” Wade says, and rather than poking Matt yet again, he pets his head once and  _ doesn’t _ get mildly assaulted for it.

“I don’t have enough friends for a party,” Matt says under his breath as Wade turns to leave.

“Emo,” Wade replies.

“Freak,” Matt shoots back.

“Orphan.”

“Ugly.”

“Yet you’re still all over me,” Wade teases, earning himself an eye roll.

“I have low standards.  _ Nonexistent  _ standards,” Matt says.

“Whatever you say. I’ll be back later; try not to miss me too much,” Wade says, being sure to fuck up Matt’s hair one last time before he actually leaves.

He makes it down to the street and a couple blocks away from Matt’s apartment before the relative silence in his head is shattered.

_ Is he going to be okay alone? _

“I mean, he said he would be. I’m inclined to believe him,” Wade answers, being sure to smile and wave in response to the disgusted looks he gets from the tourists who strayed too far from Times Square.

**He could kill himself. We stashed some guns under his floorboards.**

“He isn’t going to kill himself. At least he’s not going to kill himself without destroying any incriminating evidence, and that’ll take more than a couple hours to get rid of.”

The boxes don’t have a response for that, and Wade keeps his head down the rest of the way to Sister Margaret’s **. ** Taking a cab would probably make more sense than walking all the way to West 17 th Street, but if Wade’s being honest with himself (which he rarely is) he could use the extra time away from Matt’s constant angsting to clear his head.

When he walks through the door and into the familiar smell of booze, smoke, and old blood, it’s easy to spot the kid’s aunt; she sticks out like a sore thumb, and Wade’s shocked that she lasted the hour it took him to get there. She must be tougher than she looks. Either that or Weasel kept an eye on her, the old softie.

Wade smiles and waves when he spots her, making his way over and annoying as many of the other patrons as he possibly can on his way over. He receives no fewer than eight “ _ fuck you, Wade” _ -s, a new runner-up to his personal best record of thirteen in the same amount of time.

“Ms. Parker! What brings you to this fine establishment?” Wade asks, leaning against the bar and cringing as something on it seeps through his sleeve.

“Hi, Wade,” she says with a sort of politeness that he doesn’t quite like the sound of. When’s the other shoe going to drop?

**She’s going to kill you. Kill her first.**

_ Don’t be ridiculous. Then Peter would have to find a new guardian, and who would that be? Either Tony Stark, The State of New York, or Matt. And none of those are good options. _

“I wanted to talk to you about something Peter mentioned to me.” Ah, there’s that other shoe.

“Oh, about me getting R rated with you-know-who and someone taking a snapshot for the spank bank? Seems like that’s all anyone’s talking about lately, but they ain’t giving credit where it’s due,” Wade replies, only wondering if he should maybe censor himself a little after he’s done talking.

“So that  _ is _ you in the picture?” she asks, and Wade’s not blind to the weight that lifts off her shoulders. Single parent of a teenage superhero; he doesn’t even want to imagine the kind of stress she’s under without having to worry about this.

“Of course it’s me. If it was Spidey, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d be too busy nailing all the different pieces of Daredevil to as many crosses as I could find,” Wade says completely seriously.

The kid’s aunt looks vaguely sickened. Whoops.

“Look, lady, half my job is killing pedophiles.” He turns to where Weasel is obviously eavesdropping and whistles at him. “Hey, make yourself useful and get the books. I need to check my pedo kill count.”

Weasel throws a rag at him. “Fuck you, Wade. You know the fucking books aren’t here. And don’t act like you don’t have it memorized.”

“He’s right. I do have it memorized. Officially, it’s twenty-three. Unofficially it’s fifty-eight. They’re unofficial because there wasn’t any proof of them touching kids, but I just got that vibe from ‘em, you know? Can never be too careful.”

_ You should definitely be more careful about what you say. _

_ _

**Yeah, dumbass. Ever heard of a filter?**

The poor kid’s aunt looks terrified, concerned, and like she might be sick; all in equal measures. And she’s not saying anything. That’s never a good sign in Wade’s book.

“Look, you don’t need to worry about it. Hell, Daredevil’s being such a goddamn Catholic about the whole thing that I’ve been suicide watching him since this all went down. And by being a Catholic about it I mean he’s beating himself up about it. Not that he’s being a pedophile—gotta clarify that nowadays,” Wade tries to explain. “But don’t pass any of that on to the kid. He’d get all Catholic too if he knew how much this shit’s tearing Double D up.”

Finally, the kid’s aunt looks more relieved than anything else.

**Great job managing to pull your foot out of your mouth. You had us worried there for a minute.**

“Thank you,” she says, looking a little bit teary which: uh oh. “I just… I didn’t want to believe it, but you saw the picture. You saw what it looked like. I wanted to believe him about it, but I just… I had to make sure. I couldn’t let that happen to him. If you think it’ll help, you can tell Daredevil that I believe him.”

Just as she says the name, almost as if by magic, Wade’s phone starts ringing.

“Well speak of the Devil,” he says, pulling it out to answer the call.

* * *

Despite the rocky start to the conversation, Deadpool—Wade Wilson, his name is Wade Wilson—actually managed to convince May of what she’s been wanting to believe this whole time. Peter hasn’t been hurt. Nothing happened to him. He didn’t lie to her. Sure Wade could be lying, but he seems more genuine than most people May talks to, and he speaks so frankly that it’s hard not to believe him. She’s still basking in relief when Wade answers his phone which is why it takes her a minute longer than it should to realize who’s on the other end of the call.

“Red! You’ll never belie—” Wade starts cheerfully before snapping his jaw shut, the look on his face switching from jubilant to fiercely concerned.

“What.” He says in a tone that makes the hair on the back of May’s neck stand up and the few people standing nearby cast worried glances in Wade’s direction before stepping away.

“You  _ said _ you’d be okay on your own. That you wouldn’t do anything stu— _ holy shit _ .” The expression goes from concern to shock. Wade drags a hand down his face before hissing into the phone. “You’re wasted. You’re  _ fucking plastered _ .”

“Where are you?” Shock to exasperation. “Jeez. A dumpster. That’s real helpful.” Eye roll and a mouthed ‘ _ can you believe this shit? _ ’ to May who shrugs vaguely in response. “How many floors?” Exasperation to annoyance. “Three? You’ve had worse.” Annoyance to concern. “Wait,  _ misjudged by? _ How many total?” Concern to flat out panic. “ _ Holy shit!  _ Night Nurse or Magic Fist?!” Panic to terror. “What do you  _ mean _ you don’t know?!”

_ Shit _ . Is Daredevil going to die? Is her calling Deadpool away from his side for an hour going to be the reason he dies in a dumpster somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen? How’s she going to tell Peter that she got his second closest friend killed?

Wade’s still holding the phone to his ear with one hand, but with the other, he’s feeling around behind the bar for… something. He pulls his hand back a moment later with a set of keys clenched tightly in his fist before he climbs up onto the bar.

That gets a muttered, “ _ Oh fuck you, _ ” from the bartender, but it doesn’t stop him.

“Hey! Hey!” he yells, following it up with a whistle loud enough to gather the attention of the patrons. Most of them seem a bit annoyed but also somewhat interested. “You see her?” he asks, pointing down at May. “Leave her the  _ fuck _ alone! Y’all fuckers remember what happened to people who took the Peter Parker hit? Yeah? I know you do, Mikey! How’s life without a fuckin’ spleen treatin’ you?”

“Fuck you, Wade!” Mikey, apparently, shouts back, raising both middle fingers.

“Fuck you too! Anyone who fuckin’ talks to her is gettin’ ten times worse! Dopinder—I’m stealing your  _ fucking _ cab!”

“Okay!” calls a heavily accented voice, and a hand giving a thumbs up sticks out from under one of the tables.

With that, Wade is gone, and everyone else in the bar is back to minding their own business.

“Sorry,” May chokes out, looking to the bartender once more. “But  _ who _ did he just say there was a hit on?”

* * *

**Grownups Only 18+ NSFW/NSFL**

_ 11:58PM _

_ Wade: _ defenders assemble

_ Wade: _ help me find Matt

_ Wade: _ he’s in dumpster in kitchen

_ Wade: _ near 8 floor building

_ Wade: _ with indeterminable prob serious injuries

_ Wade: _ and postubtktjtjjogk

_ Jessica: ??? _

_ Frank: seconded _

_ _

_ Wade:  _ sorry crashed the car

_ Wade:  _ supposed to say possible alcohol poisoning

_ _

_ 12:02AM _

_ Jessica: _ wtf???

_ Frank:  _ anything more specific?

_ 12:04AM _

_ Wade: _ he was plastered when he left his place so prob not far from there

_ Claire: _ I’ll be waiting at his place.

_ 12:07AM _

_ Danny: _ omw now, Colleen too

_ 12:09AM _

_ Luke: _ Jess and I are out looking

_ 12:31AM _

_ Wade: _ any luck??????

_ 1:23 AM _

_ Frank: _ found him. Bringing to his place now. Still conscious but can’t tell if concussed or wasted

* * *

“ _ You said _ ,” Wade hisses, “that you’d be fine on your own. That you wouldn’t do anything  _ stupid _ .”

“The fuck’s it to you?” Matt slurs from where Frank’s practically carrying him down the stairs.

“ _ The fuck’s it _ —what the hell is  _ wrong _ with you, Matt?!” Wade says even as he helps Frank get Matt over to the bed and set him down.

“Hey,” Claire says. “Can this wait until after I do my job?”

“I don’t know, Matthew. Can it wait?” Wade sneers.

“ _ Hey, _ ” Claire repeats with a lot more force, and both Frank and Wade snap their heads up to look at her. “This  _ is _ going to wait until I finish my job. Both of you go wait in the living room,  _ now _ .”

There’s grumbling from Wade, and a nod from Frank, but they both head back into the living room, and Frank’s even smart enough to shut the bedroom door on his way out. Out of the whole group of them, Frank’s the best at picking up on unspoken signals after Matt.

Claire sighs and snaps on a pair of rubber gloves before pulling Matt’s mask off and setting it on the nightstand beside the bed.

“You got any idea what’s wrong with you today?” she asks, running her hands over his head methodically to check for any bumps.

“Nothing s’fuckin’ wrong with me,” Matt slurs, wincing when Claire’s fingers brush over a pretty large bump on the back of his head.

She raises an eyebrow despite knowing he can’t see it, or even perceive it the way he’d normally be able to. “You sure about that?”

“… Cracked rib,” Matt finally mutters, and Claire sighs in relief.

“Anything else?”

“Dislocated shoulder. Frank fixed it.”

For once, Claire’s actually thankful for a medical procedure done by one of the other vigilantes. Usually, they end up fucking things up worse in the long run by rooting around for bullets or trying to set broken bones, but Frank’s actually fairly good with it. Plus, this means Claire won’t have to feel like shit for putting Matt through so much pain when she pops his shoulder back in, unlike last time. Last time he ended up biting through his lip trying not to scream, and he didn’t stop shaking for twenty minutes after it was done. Judging from his reaction to other physical stimuli, she’s come to the conclusion that Matt naturally has the opposite of pain tolerance, but through God knows what kind of training he’s gotten to the point where he can take hits that would have a normal person on the ground and in tears without blinking.

“Alright, well, we gotta get you out of the suit. Think you can sit up for me?” Claire asks, earning a nod in response as Matt props himself up against the headboard.

She leans over him to reach the zipper of his suit and doesn’t say anything more. Luke told her a little bit about what’s been going on, and even this much interaction is enough to figure out that he’s in another one of his brooding phases—the first major one since he decided that Matt Murdock was dead and whoever he was then was going to murder Wilson Fisk.

As she works the suit over his swollen, injured shoulder, she decides that if there’s ever a good time to pry into his mental state, it’s now.

“Did you go out looking to get hurt again?” she asks simply, no-nonsense. That’s the answer she wants, and she’s going to ask for it directly.

She’s not sure if it’s the probable concussion, the alcohol, or just some sort of new desperation to be understood, but he answers without hesitation and without lying.

“Yes.”

Claire nods to herself as she moves to pull his boots off and set them on the floor.

“Why do you want to be hurt?”

It seems as though she used up her luck and his agreeability on the first question. There’s no response to this one.

“Do you think you deserve it?” she asks, finally getting his suit the rest of the way off.

Looking down at his bare chest, it physically hurts her to see just how many scars have been added to the collection since that first night they met. After Nobu, the scarring was bad enough that she knew it would’ve scared her to see on a man. Now, he looks like some sort of slasher flick villain. The worst scars are inarguably the ones from the ninjas that nearly killed him not that long ago, but that’s not what’s important right now. She can see a bruise starting to bloom over his ribs on the left side. It doesn’t look like anything worse than his special standard of “usual”, so cracked rib was probably the correct guess on his part.

Once enough time has passed that it becomes clear he isn’t going to answer that question either, Claire takes a deep breath.

“Did you really get pushed off that building, or did you jump?”

“I didn’t jump,” Matt defends vehemently and immediately. “I’d  _ never _ do that.”

That eases the fear in Claire’s mind significantly, and she lets the breath out.

“Not in the suit,” he adds on, and the fear returns in full force.

“But you would. As Matt Murdock.”

It’s a statement, not a question. It doesn’t need a response.

“Okay,” Claire says. “Okay. You need to talk to someone. Your priest, your mom, I don’t care. Just talk to someone. I can ask around—try and find a therapist who’d keep everything you say a secret. But you can’t keep doing this, Matt. You’re fine for a few months, a year at most, and then something happens and you spiral. You need help. Professional help. This isn’t something I can fix.

“You don’t have to tell me what’s going on. All I know is that you started  _ this _ spiral when people started thinking you and Peter were a couple. And if you keep working with him, people are going to keep saying things. Your two options are sorting out whatever trauma you’ve got that makes that so hard to handle or not working with him anymore. And if you abandon that kid, I’m gonna kill you. So you’ve got one option.”

She leans down to her bag on the floor and pulls out a few instant cold packs, setting them on the bed before grabbing a couple of t-shirts from Matt’s dresser. She goes through the methodical process of cracking and shaking the cold packs before wrapping them in the t-shirts and placing them over Matt’s ribs, shoulder, and the back of his head.

“Try and get some rest. I’m gonna make sure someone stays here tonight,” she says as she gathers up her supplies and pulls off the gloves.

It goes unspoken that what she really means is ‘someone who can keep you from hurting yourself’.

“Okay,” Matt says quietly.

Claire shuts the bedroom door halfway behind her and looks around the rest of the apartment. Frank’s standing by the window, but Wade’s nowhere to be seen.

“I sent Wilson back to his place,” Frank says. “He needs a break. Figured I’d be enough to keep Red from doing anything too stupid.”

“Yeah?” she says, setting her bag on the coffee table and sitting down on the couch. “Feel like helping me gather up his shoelaces?”

“That bad, huh?” Frank asks with a raised eyebrow.

“That bad.”

* * *

This is it. This is the last straw. He’s going to kill him.

Foggy is going to kill his stupid, law-breaking, hard-drinking, constantly angsting  _ moron _ of a best friend. He could call on any number of people to help him hide the body—judging by how bitter the text message was, Foggy’s willing to bet Wade would offer to hold Matt down while he smothered him with a pillow.

Three rapid, hard knocks and a second later the door opens to reveal a haggard-looking Frank Castle, who is  _ not _ who Foggy had been expecting.

“Oh good, morning shift’s here,” Frank says, opening the door wider to let him in. “I left a guy tied up in a car trunk last night to come deal with all this shit—I gotta get back to him. Good luck with Red.”

And without a single word on Foggy’s part, Frank is moving past him and out of the apartment to, apparently, go continue whatever it is he’d had planned after kidnapping a man.

Nope, he does  _ not _ want to know how that’s going to end.

As Foggy heads into the apartment after shutting and locking the door behind him, he sees Matt sitting on the couch in his usual ‘I-fucked-up-last-night’ outfit of sweatpants and a hoodie. No matter how much it makes him look like a kicked puppy, no matter how dorkishly adorable it is that the loser tucks his sweatpants into his socks, Foggy’s not going to go easy on him.

“Hey Foggy,” Matt says quietly.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Foggy hisses viciously. “What in the actual fuck were you thinking, Matt? Tell me.”

Matt opens his mouth to reply, but Foggy doesn’t even give him the chance to answer.

“The only thing I’ll accept from you is ‘I wasn’t thinking’,” he snaps. “Because even though you do a lot of dumb shit, you’re a smart guy, Matt. If you were stupid, there’s no way you’d still be alive. But going out drunk—No, not drunk— _ wasted _ is just about the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Foggy, I—”

“No, Matt! Do you have any idea what could’ve happened?! You could’ve died—fuck, logically speaking, you probably  _ should’ve  _ died pulling a stunt like that! You fell off an eight-story building! Imagine if there’d been a piece of rebar or a couple two-by-fours or even a fucking toaster oven in that dumpster! You’d be dead! Or paralyzed—and I’m not sure what would be worse!”

Matt hangs his head a little lower, but he doesn’t try and interrupt again.

“If you died, then the cops would’ve found your body, and I’d probably end up in jail as an accessory— Karen too. Karen might be able to cut it in prison—she’s hard, but me? I’d either be dead or ending my first day with a bandana in my back pocket. And if you hadn’t died? If you’d been paralyzed? I can see you surviving in prison for at least a little while as you are, but if you can’t fight? You’ll be dead the second the guards turn their back—maybe even before.”

“Foggy, I’m sorry. You don’t understand—”

Foggy sees red. Red like that stupid fucking world-on-fire vision Matt’s talked about but never really explained.

“I don’t understand?  _ I _ don’t understand? Look, Saint Matthew, I know it’s got you pretty torn up that people think you’re screwing around with someone they don’t know is a kid, but that’s no excuse to go out and get yourself killed!”

Up to this point, Matt’s been taking the scolding with a fair amount of dignity Foggy has to admit. Matt’s always pretty good about being yelled at; probably the product of having been raised by nuns. But apparently Foggy finally said something to cut through the good, self-flagellating façade.

“You have no  _ fucking _ clue what you’re talking about,” Matt snarls out of nowhere.

That’s what he was waiting for. Push him till he snaps, and  _ then  _ he’ll talk. That’s what years of friendship has taught him.

“Then tell me, Matt. Just—talk to me. Tell me why this is such a big deal—don’t get drunk and beat the shit out of people. _Talk to me_,” Foggy all but begs.

“There’s nothing  _ to _ talk about!” Matt snaps.

“Yes—yes there is! I  _ know _ you had it rough as a kid, Matt. God, I can’t imagine how hard it was. Look, I know people hurt you—”

Foggy can instantly tell that was the wrong thing to say.

“Shut the  _ fuck _ up! You have no  _ fucking _ clue what it was like for me! If you wanna go around trying to solve the damn tragic mystery of my childhood, show me the fucking courtesy of doing it out of my hearing range! If you’re so goddamn desperate to figure out who touched me as a kid,  _ spoiler alert _ , the only person who knows any of that shit is me! And I’m not fucking talking about it! You can go ask Sister Maggie, but guess what?! She doesn’t have a fucking clue! None of them do—none of them did! They didn’t fucking care enough to see what was happening right in front of them, and I’m  _ not _ like that! I’d notice that shit—and I’d sure as fuck kill myself before I ever did it! Get the hell out!”

Matt’s breathing hard by the end of that screaming outburst, and Foggy honestly has no idea what to say. That wasn’t what he was expecting. When he pushes, Matt snaps at him and then explains. He doesn’t snap and keep snapping and shut him out even further. Sure, it revealed some of what Matt’s been beating himself up about, but Foggy’s almost positive he just did more harm than good.

“Look, Matt,” he says gently. “I’m sorry. I crossed a line. I’ve been worried about you, and if we’re being honest, I’m even more worried now.”

“Just leave. The actual morning shift for suicide watch is on the way—Jessica I think,” Matt sneers in that way he does when he drops shocking information just to push someone away.

What in the fresh hell?

“ _ Actual _ suicide watch?”

“They set it up last night. They think that I jumped.”

Foggy inhales deeply. He shouldn’t need to ask it, but he does. He has to.

“Did you?”

Matt flinches.

“I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t do that. To you—and Karen. I’d burn everything first. So the cops wouldn’t find it,” Matt says quietly.

Foggy doesn’t know what to say.

“Matt,” he starts quietly, “are you off your meds?”

No response. That’s fine. Foggy can wait it out.

“I’ve been off them since I died,” Matt answers finally.

It bothers him that’s what Matt has settled on calling what happened at Midland Circle. Because he didn’t die. And he’s not going to die. And the thought of Matt dying brings back all the terrible memories of crying until he puked because  _ he’s the one who brought Matt the suit, he’s the reason Matt’s dead and they don’t even have a body to bury. _

“Okay,” Foggy says. “Well, it won’t be hard to get you back on them. Just call Doctor Austin, and I’m sure he’ll be able to work you in by next week. Especially for something like this.”

Matt nods, and Foggy’s actually pretty proud of his de-escalation of the situation. At least, he is until Matt sits bolt upright despite his injuries with a look of sheer panic on his face. Foggy half expects a SWAT team to come smashing through the windows with how flat out terrified Matt looks.

“Peter’s here—I can’t—Foggy, I  _ can’t _ see him.”

Any other time, Foggy would make the obligatory ‘of course you can’t see him; you can’t see anyone’ joke, but not now. He hasn’t seen Matt this freaked out since that one time in college when he came back to the dorm after breaking up with Elektra.

“Okay—okay, it’s alright, I’ll handle it,” Foggy assures. “He coming through the roof or the front door?”

“Front door,” Matt manages to get out.

“Alright, you said Jess is on her way, yeah?” A nod, good. “Okay, then I’ll go deal with Peter.”

As he heads back to the door, Foggy can hear Matt doing the breathing exercises he’s used almost religiously throughout the entirety of their friendship. He tells himself that Matt will be fine as he opens the door.

Peter’s standing just outside the door with his hand raised to knock, and he actually jumps at the sight of Foggy.

“Oh—um, hi Mr. Nelson,” he says. “I’m just… Matt’s okay, right? I heard that he fell off a building?”

“Hey, Peter,” Foggy says, stepping out of the apartment and shutting the door behind him. “He’s kinda banged up, and he has a concussion. Now’s just… not really a good time to see him.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Peter looks unsure, and also a little bit like he might try and sneak into the apartment anyway. Foggy feels for the kid, really he does, but after how poorly his conversation with Matt went, he at least owes it to his friend to keep Peter from seeing him this way.

“Here, I’ll walk with you out,” Foggy offers with a smile, knowing that Peter will be too polite to refuse if Matt’s stories about him have any truth to them at all.

“I… alright, thanks,” Peter says, flashing a quick, probably fake smile.

They make their way downstairs and all the way out to the street before either of them says anything else. Foggy’s been waiting for it, though.

“Is Matt mad at me?” he asks with big, sad eyes that hurt Foggy all the way down to his core.

“Peter, no—”

“It’s just, he wasn’t answering my calls after everything happened, and I just figured he was busy, but yesterday he stopped letting them ring out and just started declining them and I really didn’t mean to cause any trouble. Really, I told Mr. Stark what’s going on and I talked to my aunt and I’m trying to get people to leave him alone and—I  _ know _ I was really mean yesterday when those people were asking me about him and someone put it online, and I’m not really that mad, I just don’t want him to keep ignoring me. I’m really sorry,” Peter says, and Christ, are those tears in his eyes?

“Peter, I promise he’s not mad at you,” Foggy says softly. “He’s just… Matt’s got, y’know, problems. And sometimes he just gets like this. He’s not mad at you, he just… he just can’t handle you right now.”

Peter looks even more hurt at that explanation and gives a nod before turning swiftly and heading in the direction of the subway station.

Shit, Foggy’s really putting his whole damn foot in his mouth today.

* * *

Sam’s interactions with Spider-Man have been extremely limited. He fought the kid at the airport in Germany, and he got an apology from the kid when he showed up in Tony’s lab to get some upgrades done to his wings. That’s the scope of his interaction with Spider-Man.

Sure, he’s read the occasional news story on the kid, and yeah, he’s vaguely aware that he started running with a superhero crew that Tony doesn’t really approve of a while back, but recently he’s been made much more aware of this.

Everywhere he looks online he sees that damn picture of the kid sucking face with Daredevil. That leaves two options which are both fairly unpleasant. Option A: Daredevil is also a minor and has been getting almost killed since he was around fourteen, or much less pleasant Option B: Daredevil is a pedophile.

Option B is, extremely unfortunately, the much more likely one.

If there’s anyone else who’s freaking out about this as much as he is, Sam’s positive it’s going to be Tony, so that’s who he goes to.

For once in his life, Tony isn’t in the lab when Sam shows up. Friday actually tells him to go to Stark’s office if he wants to see him.

When he arrives up there, he’s greeted by exactly what he’d expected: Tony running on what looks like a grand total of 4 hours of sleep for the whole week. The number of coffee cups littered around the office is frankly unhygienic, but that’s not the most important issue at hand.

“Ah, Samuel, what brings you to my humble dwelling?” Tony asks, gesturing to the room widely without looking up from the screen his eyes are glued to.

“I’m worried about Peter’s safety,” Sam says, no precursor, no buffer, just that.

“Get in line,” Tony replies, finally looking over at him. “I take it you saw the picture.”

Sam nods. “You can’t not see it. Saw it printed on a damn supermarket tabloid. You talked to him about it?”

Tony nods. “Rhodey, Barton and I were tryin’ to figure out what to do about it when the kid ran in and started spewing a load of fun stuff. I don’t think I’d ever heard him say ‘fuck’ that many times in my life.”

“What was he saying?” Sam asks, taking a seat in one of the chairs across from Tony’s desk.

“All sorts of shit. That it’s Deadpool in the picture and not him, that Daredevil’s got some secret other than his identity that if it got out would ruin his life, that  _ I’m _ probably a pedophile, oh, and that he got molested as a kid,” Tony lists off almost nonchalantly.

If Sam weren’t better at reading people, he’d think Tony was being flippant about the whole thing rather than running himself ragged over it.

“He—what was that last one?” Sam asks because there’s no way he heard that right.

“I asked him if it was a crime to try and keep him from getting molested. He said I was about ten years late to the party on that one. I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell could’ve happened when he was a kid, but I can’t find records anywhere. You think it didn’t get reported?”

Sam’s still reeling, and feeling more than a little sick from the latest revelation, so it takes him a moment to really process what it is that Tony said.

“Look, I know you care about him, but is it really your business to be looking into that? If he wanted you to know what happened, don’t you think he’d tell you?” Sam says with a frown.

Peter’s got a fairly public life as Spider-Man—to some degree, he  _ is _ a celebrity. All of his struggles in the suit are shared with the world, including what Sam’s sure have got to be traumatic moments. There are probably a lot of things he wants to keep private, and if Sam was going to bet on it, childhood sexual abuse is probably the one thing he most wants to keep under wraps.

“He mentioned it to me, didn’t he?” Tony replies.

“He did. Briefly and vaguely in what sounds like a pretty heated argument about an upsetting and potentially triggering topic for him. Do you really want to look into that? Do you really think Peter wants you looking into that? He idolizes you, Tony. Are you really going to betray his trust like that?” Sam says, staring Tony down from across the desk. It’s crucial that Tony understand this, that he gets where it is that Sam is coming from.

Contrary to popular belief, Tony can be a reasonable guy. He can admit when he’s wrong about something. He just won’t do it unless he really, truly understands the reason  _ why _ what he was doing or saying was wrong.

Tony sighs. “What if it’s someone he still has to interact with, Sam? Like a neighbor or someone at school, or a family friend? He shouldn’t have to go through that.”

It’s a valid concern, that much is true.

“He’s close with his aunt, right?” Sam asks.

“Yeah, very close.”

“Then if he mentioned it to you, he’s probably brought it up with her. Even if he hasn’t, you’re not going to find out who did it by searching police records like that. I won’t tell you not to worry about it, but don’t obsess. Try and deal with the more present problem: whatever the hell it is that’s going on with Daredevil.” It’s the best advice Sam can offer in the moment, really. He won’t be able to say anything that can assuage Tony’s guilt, but he can try and get him to redirect that energy to something that matters.

“I’ve been trying. I can multitask.”

Sam sighs.

“But now that you mention it, there’s definitely a resource I haven’t been utilizing to its full extent.”

* * *

Hell’s Kitchen has a vigilante problem.

The problem isn’t that there’s a vigilante though; the problem is that there’s a different vigilante.

Although he’s not happy about it, Brett’s grown rather used to seeing Daredevil, or traces of him, all over the city. He’s the one that coined the name after all, so it does make him a little bit proud that everyone in the city knows it.

Daredevil has his weird schedule, never out during the day, never out on Sundays, and almost cyclic long-term disappearances. Every time he disappears, there’s a betting pool at the station about whether or not it’s because he’s finally died or because he just retired again.

Brett tried asking Foggy about it once, but the guy refuses to answer questions about Daredevil, always citing attorney-client privilege as the reason. He can say whatever he wants, but Brett’s damn sure that if Daredevil ever gets brought in, Nelson, Murdock, and now Page are going down with him.

That right there is part of the reason Brett stopped trying to arrest Daredevil—part of the reason he’s actively helped the vigilante on multiple occasions. The other part of the reason is that he, somewhat begrudgingly, likes the guy.

He does good work for the city, and despite his very clearly vocalized distaste for cops, the work he does makes their job that much safer. He gets guns off the street and stops bad guys before they even manage to get themselves on the NYPD’s radar.

So when Brett’s been seeing all Spidey and no Daredevil for the past three days, that’s why he caves and asks after Hornhead.

“So, Daredevil get himself hurt or something?” Brett asks, tilting his head up to where Spider-Man’s lurking over them on the side of a building.

“Who knows? It’s not like he’s been ignoring my calls for a week or anything,” Spider-Man says in the exact same tone Brett’s sure his ex-girlfriends talk about him in.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asks.

Spidey scoffs. “What paradise? There’s no paradise. He’s just a moron who can’t keep it in his fucking pants.”

And with that, Spider-Man is gone.

That night, Brett wonders if maybe Spidey’s the reason that Daredevil’s incapacitated. Brett sure as hell wouldn’t want to face the consequences of cheating on a superpowered vigilante.

* * *

This isn’t like Tony’s typical requests from him. For one, it’s entirely selfless. For two, it’s something Clint had already planned on doing on his own. It’s definitely the job for him.

With the way he acts in everyday life—running into furniture, making dumb references and dad jokes, talking to his dog, and eating pizza that’s been sitting on top of the fridge for three days—it’s easy to write him off as bumbling, clutzy, and nonthreatening. The constant black eyes and butterfly bandages can even be endearing to a point; so much that sometimes people, even people he knows well, forget just how capable he is.

He’s the only normal human without some sort of teched-out suit on a team full of superheroes; he has to be twice as good at his job as they are at theirs to be considered half as valuable. It’s a lesson he learned early on in life; all you have is yourself and your skills, so make them the best that you can.

It’s time to drop the goofy, fun, friend act and figure out just what the hell is going on.

Daredevil isn’t easy to find. The guy may as well be superhuman with how he leaps around the city. By the time you get to where you heard screaming and bones snapping he’s already halfway across Hell’s Kitchen enacting his justice on whatever other poor suckers he can find.

The past two nights of stalking around have gotten Clint jack shit. He hasn’t seen Daredevil, hasn’t even heard one of his fights. Reaching out to Peter on a completely different topic got him nothing but radio silence, so that option is ruled out too. Kid’s probably still pissed about him helping Tony with looking into Daredevil as soon as the bomb dropped.

Those are some fights that Clint would love to be counted out of. Putting the kid on a leash so long that he got lost was a bad idea in the first place, but there’s no worse follow up to that than to switch it out with a choke chain. Of course the kid’s going to pull, and in spirit of the company he’s been keeping for the better part of a year, he’s going to be vicious about it.

As he heads down yet another dimly lit street, Clint hears it: punches being thrown in an off shooting alley. He makes his way there as fast as he possibly can, but when he rounds the corner he’s not met with the sight he’d expected.

He’d expected Daredevil standing over a bad guy, breaking bones and taking names.

What he gets is Spider-Man standing in front of a grimy wall with a relatively uninjured criminal stuck to it.

Peter whips his head around the second Clint appears, and the change in the kids posture from guarded, to relieved, back to a fighting stance is even more off-putting than him being there in the first place.

“What are you doing here?” Peter snaps, and Clint can feel the force of his glare through the white lenses of the mask.

“I think we both know the answer to that,” Clint replies calmly, standing his ground when Peter stalks toward him.

“I’m not fucking Daredevil,” he snarls, a sound he didn’t know the kid was capable of making.

“I just want to talk to him,” Clint assures.

“Yeah? Well, get in line. If he’s not talking to me, he sure as hell won’t talk to you,” Peter snaps before stalking past Clint and out of the alley.

That sparks some curiosity.

“Why isn’t he talking to you?” Clint asks.

“Because of this shit! Because people like you won’t fucking listen to the truth! I mean, first off, let’s talk about how he got outed and people started suggesting he should be killed for being gay- I’m certain that wasn’t easy to deal with. And maybe because he doesn’t want you trying to kill him. Or it might just be that he had a less than stellar fucking childhood and all this shit he’s being accused of ain’t exactly bringing back good memories—oh wait, no, that was me. I’m the one you’re bringing up the bad memories in. So do me a favor, and get the fuck out of Hell’s Kitchen. I see you here again and I’ll break your fucking knees—same goes for Stark or anyone else he sends, and you can tell him that.”

And with a final vicious look, Peter’s gone—swinging off to someplace more deserving of his presence—leaving Clint behind in the middle of a near-empty street.

That went well.

* * *

Yep, Camila’s sure of it; Spider-Man is a child.

Well, teenager.

The point is, he’s a minor, and she is  _ so _ not okay with that.

In all her research, the pattern that she was hoping she wouldn’t see emerged clearly. He’s out all the time on weekends, but he only comes out after three-thirty on weekdays. He’s out on weekdays before three only during the times that local high schools have marked as holidays on their calendars. It’s official; Spider-Man is still in school. In fact, she’s pretty sure she knows what high school he goes to. Thanks to his appearance in Washington DC to save Queens’ own Midtown Tech Academic Decathlon team from an untimely demise and his very obvious base of operations in Queens, it isn’t exactly a difficult conclusion to draw now that she’s sure of his age.

Now that she has this information though, she has no idea what exactly she should be doing with it. Her first worry is that Daredevil might be taking advantage of him, that that’s why he’s been so upset lately, but she reminds herself rather quickly of how desperate he’d been to have an adult believe him. To her, that reads more like he’s frustrated with the whole situation and the lack of a voice he’s been given in it, most likely with the people who know his identity.

This doesn’t stop the thoughts from running circles in her mind for the better half of a week. In fact, it isn’t until five days after the realization of Spider-Man’s status rocked her world that she actually sees him again. It’s just not the context she’s used to seeing him in.

Rather than her being in uniform and him turning over a criminal to her, she’s in street clothes almost home from dinner and drinks with a few friends when she sees him sitting on the edge of her roof with his head in his hands. She sees his shape from a ways away, and at first, she’s worried it might be a jumper until she gets close enough to make out the clothing.

Instead of shouting up at him, she heads into the building and keeps walking up the stairs, past her floor and all the way to the roof. She hesitates at the door for a moment before pushing it open and calling out with a soft, “Spider-Man? You still up here?”

He’s still up there, and he spins around from his spot on the roof to stare at her. She swears she hears a bit of sniffling.

She’s not sure if he recognizes her out of uniform, but after a few seconds he lets out a quiet, “Officer Bridges?” His voice definitely sounds like he’s either been crying or on the verge of crying, which only reinforces her choice to come and check on him.

“I’m off the clock,” she says with a soft smile. “You can call me Camila if you’d like. Mind if I sit with you?”

Spider-Man, seemingly unsure of what to do in these circumstances, gives her a shaky nod which is invitation enough for her to make her way to the ledge at the edge of the roof. She sits a few feet down from him but dangles her legs off the edge just the same as him.

“It’s nice up here,” she says. “I should come here more. Make the most of how much my landlord is charging me.”

“You live here?” Spider-Man asks, sounding a bit nervous.

“I do,” she confirms. “It’s not the best place, but I can afford it and they let me have my cats, so it’s not too bad.”

“You have cats?” And this time Spider-Man sounds interested instead of wary.

“Two of ‘em. Do you wanna see a picture?” she asks, already pulling out her phone.

Spider-Man nods like she expected him to, and she pulls up a picture of her cats to show to him.

“The white one is Parsnip and the orange one is Carrot,” she says, handing him her phone to look.

“They’re cute,” he says. “I like the theme.”

“Thanks.” She smiles at him, and he passes her phone back. Might as well ask it now since he seems comfortable around her.

“Are you alright, Spider-Man?”

His shoulders actually tremble for a second before sagging, and he shakes his head.

“Is it about Daredevil?” she asks softly.

A moment’s hesitation before a nod.

Deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I know it must be hard to hear what everyone has to say about you two, and I know it must be even harder since your people don’t believe you, especially considering… considering how young you are.”

The moment she says it she sees Spider-Man go stiff. She can practically taste his mounting panic in the air, and she knows that if she doesn’t say something soon then he’ll bolt.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” she assures, but when that doesn’t help much she tacks on, “I still believe you. About Daredevil. That you two aren’t together.”

Spider-Man looks like he’s not considering running away anymore, but he’s still crying. Christ, he’s probably a couple years younger than her little brother. Seeing him hurt like this hurts her too.

“It’s alright,” she says softly, hopping down from the ledge and moving closer to where Spider-Man is. “Come here.” She holds her arms open in invitation, and within a few seconds she has her arms full of crying teenage vigilante.

She hugs him a little tighter, and he cries a little harder. She doesn’t say anything and neither does he. They stand there in the special brand of loud silence that only their city can offer.

“He won’t talk to me,” Spider-Man says finally.

“Who?” Camila asks, a little surprised that he’s going to make himself even more vulnerable around her than he already has.

“Daredevil. I told you that he won’t talk to me since everything happened. That he promised me he’d never miss my calls, but now he just declines them. I went to his apartment, but he wouldn’t let me in. Deadpool gives me updates on him sometimes, but…” Spider-Man stops talking.

“But what?” she prompts gently.

“But it’s not the same! I don’t—I didn’t even mess up.  _ He’s _ the one that messed up, doing that in public with Deadpool. I mean, yeah I said some mean things about him, but that was only after he started ignoring me. And now Mr. Stark is sending people out to track him down and if he finds Daredevil and unmasks him it’ll ruin his life and that  _ will _ be my fault!”

“Whatever happens, it isn’t going to be your fault, okay?” Camila says because she needs him to know that above anything else. “You aren’t responsible for the actions of others. You know that, right? People have free will.”

“I-I guess,” Spider-Man concedes after a moment of silence.

“I know this must be hard to deal with, and I’m so sorry you’re going through this. If you need to talk to someone, I’m here. My kitchen window’s on the left side of the building, fifth floor. It’s got three flower pots in the window—a yellow one, a purple one, and a green one. I’ll be there all night tonight and all day tomorrow. You can come over to talk, or you can just come over and see my cats. Whatever you need, okay?”

“Okay,” Spider-Man says quietly. “I think—I think I’m gonna go home now.”

Camila is suddenly struck by the realization that his parents probably wait up for him to come home at night. That is, if they even know what he does. If they don’t and he dies in the mask, will she be the one that gets sent to their door with the news?

“Do you need a ride? I can borrow my neighbor’s car real quick,” she offers, and Spider-Man immediately shakes his head.

“No, it’s okay. I live pretty close.”

“Alright,” Camila replies. “I’ll head inside so you don’t have to worry about me seeing what direction you go. Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will,” Spider-Man agrees quietly.

* * *

It’s been seven days, one week, since Matt’s accident. Injury. Whatever it is.

He still hasn’t gotten an exact answer. Wade’s been vague about what exactly it was that transpired that night, and it’s not like Peter’s gotten the chance to ask Matt himself. After the sixth phone call was declined and all six of his voicemail messages begging for a response were ignored, and his single attempt to show up unannounced and demand an audience with the great Saint Matthew was foiled by Foggy, he gave up on trying to get in contact.

While the majority of the clickbait news headlines online and trashy magazines are milking Spider-Man and Daredevil’s “perfect partnership” for everything that it’s worth, and already some of the more conspiratorial supermarket tabloids are starting to talk about Daredevil and Spider-Man’s breakup because of ‘outside strain’ on the relationship. What’s surprising is that it’s really not all that far off from the truth. Matt hasn’t exactly said ‘we’re finished’ but he has well and truly ghosted Peter.

At first, Peter wanted to scream, then he wanted to cry. A few days have passed since his final call, and currently he’s experiencing a mix of the two reactions. One minute he’ll feel sorry for Matt and everything he’s been put through because of this; the next he’ll be pissed at Matt for starting it in the first place.

His apartment is less than three blocks from where the picture was taken. Peter knows exactly what alley it was taken in; the graffiti is unmistakable. Three more blocks of self-restraint and none of this would be happening.

If he’s being honest, Peter expected Matt to be back out on the street by now. A gunshot wound only kept him down for two weeks, and from what Wade  _ has _ told him, these injuries sound like they’d be faster to heal. Every time he texts, asking if Matt is okay, if he wants Peter to stop looking after the neighborhood for him, there’s some sort of flimsy text about how his injuries are ‘acting up’ again. There’s no way it’s true, and while the fact that there’s something that they’re covering up worries Peter, it hurts him deeply that they feel like they can’t tell him.

By this point, he’s assuming it’s mental health issues. It’s been talked about in vague terms, and he’s picked up a few details from even more spread out conversations that Matt’s mental health isn’t exactly the greatest. He knows there was something akin to a suicide attempt more than a year ago, but he’s never dug any further into it.

Were the injuries from a week ago another attempt?

Peter doesn’t have time to see the emotions that thought sparks through, because before he knows what’s happening a dagger is bouncing off of his side.

He hadn’t meant to let his mind wander while he was doing Matt’s job since he knows the Kitchen is dangerous, but when he looks around, he finds himself completely surrounded by the same brand of ninjas that nearly killed Matt.

Peter doesn’t even get time to dwell on why the spidey-sense didn’t alert him to the  _ very obvious _ danger that’s completely surrounded him now, with swords drawn and raised by hands that clearly know how to use them.

He knows from experience that the red armor isn’t strong enough to keep the blade of their swords from getting through. The black armor he’s unsure of, but he’s not about to test that alone on a rooftop with fifteen ninjas.

Peter dodges the next throwing knife, and from there it’s full-blown chaos. He barely has time to shoot one or two webs with the constant dodging and running and tucking and rolling he’s having to do to avoid being impaled.

It dawns on him that the ninjas are pulling the circle tighter, getting closer and closer.

He turns away from kicking one ninja out of range, only to have another, sword ready to run him straight through, right there. Peter braces himself for the pain he imagines comes along with being impaled, but it never comes.

Instead, the ninja drops to the ground with blood pouring out of his throat. He’s too stunned to act for a split second, but once he finally does, he realizes he’s not alone.

There’s a woman, significantly shorter than him, dressed in all black with a scarf around the lower half of her face driving a sai through yet another ninja. They’ve started dropping like flies around him. Five appear to be dead, two more are bleeding out, and the others seem to have vanished.

“Wh—” he starts breathlessly before being interrupted.

“I can see why he likes you,” the woman drawls, stepping over the last body she dropped. “Very capable, strong moral code, looks good in red spandex. You’re just his type.” She takes a step closer, her face just a couple inches from Peter’s, and the blade of her sai positioned against his chin. “But are you good for him?”

“I—don’t, um— I’m not sure—”

The woman’s eyes go wide and she takes a step back, giving him a once over. “You certainly sound young.”

“I’m um—it isn’t even—” He’s cut off once again.

“I changed my mind. If dear, sweet Matthew laid a single hand on you, I think I’ll carve out his intestines and serve them to him,” she purrs before just… disappearing.

Peter’s left, surrounded by dead bodies, with only one thought in his mind.

He has to get to Matt before she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings (SPOILER ALERT!!!)  
-mentions of childhood sexual abuse  
-references to abuse in the Catholic church
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave kudos or even a comment if you enjoyed. Happy holidays and remember to check me out on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone to see me lose my mind real time and contemplate butchering my hair into an emo hot mess


	8. Not Your Typical Injuries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You said Matt was hurt," Peter finally settles on saying. "Was that what you meant?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check end notes for trigger warnings. beta read by Echo!

Of everything Peter could've possibly stumbled in on, this was the farthest from what he'd expected. With the warning he'd gotten from that woman, well- it was more of a threat that a warning, he'd expected to find blood and carnage and Matt's poor bedroom door broken yet again.

He'd expected anything but this.

Matt isn't sliced up and bleeding out; he's sitting on his couch with his head down and his fingers all knotted up in his hair. The fact that he doesn't look up or even seem to notice when Peter enters the apartment is a sign that something is very wrong with him.

The answer as to what's wrong can be found in little bits all over the apartment. Three empty beer bottles on the counter. Thirteen more in the recycling bin alongside two whiskey bottles. A half-empty bottle of scotch rests on top of the coffee table just in front of Matt, and as if Peter needed more proof of what was wrong, one of Matt's hands reaches out to grab the bottle.

After drinking directly from it for long enough that the level in the bottle has noticeably lowered, Wade appears from Matt's bedroom and rushes over to pry the bottle out of Matt's hand.

"Hey, no, we talked about this," Wade says gently, screwing the cap back on and setting the scotch a bit farther away.

Matt mumbles something that Peter can't make out, and Wade can't either, judging by the way he comes back to kneel just in front of Matt. He puts his hand on Matt's chin and tilts his head up slightly so that he'll have a shot at hearing whatever Matt says next.

"Could you say that again? My hearing ain't as good as yours."

"Said m'sorry," Matt slurs quietly as the light from the billboard outside the window shifts.

In the dark blue lighting Peter hadn't been able to tell, but in the bright white he can see the tear tracks running down Matt's cheeks while more gather in his eyes. That about makes Peter's heart stop.

He's seen Matt stabbed. He's seen Matt shot. He's seen Matt bleeding to death, and burned, and in levels of pain that Peter can only imagine. But he's never seen him cry.

"It's alright. You don't have to apologize, idiot," Wade says softly. "Will you drink some water though?"

Matt nods slowly, and Wade gets to his feet and heads over to the kitchen.

"Good boy."

Peter can't help but jolt when that rips a truly pained, keening sound from Matt as he curls in on himself more. The look of regret that fills Wade's face is unmistakable.

"Shit– I'm sorry, Red. Didn't mean it that way, yeah?" Wade soothes as he fills a glass with water from the tap and brings it back over to Matt.

"S'okay," Matt mumbles.

"Alright, hold out your hand for me? Don't think you'll be able to pick this up on your own with how you are right now," Wade says, and Matt extends one hand which Wade carefully places the glass in.

Matt takes a few sips of the water before shakily moving to set it on the edge of the coffee table.

"Y'know I–I wouldn' do it, right?" Matt says in a voice made hoarse either by disuse or overuse; Peter can't tell which. "I wouldn't."

Wade's shoulders sorta slump a little, and he stands up from where he'd kneeled back in front of Matt. "I know. You know too. So does everyone else who matters."

"Jess thought I would," Matt whispers.

Peter can see the way that Wade both cringes and deflates further at this. It seems like this must be a conversation they've had multiple times, what with the way both of them seem to be operating off something resembling a script.

"No, she didn't. She made a stupid joke."

Matt doesn't seem to be at all appeased by this. Peter isn't even sure if he heard it, with how well he ignores it and just continues on.

"I wouldn't. Just because– just because I let it happen to me doesn't mean I did it to him." Peter hates the way Matt's voice catches as he speaks, but he hates what Wade has to say next even more.

"Hey, we've talked about this. You didn't  _ let _ anything happen to you. You were a kid– a blind little kid – and they took advantage of that and  _ they _ did fucked up shit. That ain't on you. It's on them."

Them, them,  _ them _ .

Peter's not stupid, and, despite a lot of people's assumptions, he's not naïve either. He knows that Matt got... hurt as a kid, and what Wade said makes it pretty damn clear that it was worse than Matt made it seem from the joking, throwaway reference to a priest he'd given to Peter all those months ago.

"I could've stopped it," Matt says quietly.

"No," Wade says. "You couldn't. You were a ward of the state, and doing anything would've outed you as enhanced. You know that people like us didn't have any fuckin' rights then. We barely have 'em now. Little kid with special powers who belongs to the government? We both know what woulda happened. Come on, Matty--"

Another horrible, visceral sound from Matt that has Wade cringing at his own words.

"Sorry, sorry. I won't say it again, Red. You've told me you didn't have any other options. And even if you did, it wasn't on you to act on them. People were supposed to be taking care of you. They should've made sure that never happened in the first place."

Matt doesn't look the slightest bit convinced by any of Wade's awkward, if entirely correct, speech.

Apparently, that doesn't mean Wade is going to stop.

"Okay, look. Let's say Pete came to you and told you someone hurt him like that, yeah? What would you tell him then?" Wade says.

"What makes you think he'd ever come to me?" Matt says, and the question sounds genuine which cuts Peter deeper than he thought it would.

"Because the kid fucking loves you. But that's not the point– the point is that you wouldn't tell him that he should've fought harder. You'd never tell him that, and how old is he?"

"Sixteen..." Matt says quietly.

"And how old were you?"

"Thirteen."

Wade sighs. "No, how old were you when it started?"

"Ten..."

Peter feels sick. He feels like he genuinely might throw up. Matt was still adjusting to being blind. His dad had just been murdered. He was alone. He was a kid. Not just that, but that it happened for  _ three years _ . There's no mistaking what they're talking about, and just the thought of it has Peter shaking. How could no one notice over that long a time? How could no one stop it? Did they just not care?

"If you don't blame a sixteen-year-old with super strength for not hypothetically fighting it off, how can you blame a disabled ten-year-old?" Wade says.

Matt pauses, and it seems like he might actually be about to listen to what it is Wade's been saying this whole time. Like he might believe him. Wade's shoulders relax a little, and Peter feels like it might be an okay time to act like he just showed up then.

That all goes out the window when Matt jumps out of his fucking skin and starts screaming at the space a few feet to Wade's left. For a second Peter thinks it might just be that since he's so drunk he can't tell where Wade is, but it becomes apparent pretty damn fast that Matt is yelling at someone who isn't there.

"No! No! I'd never fucking do that! I haven't ever laid a fucking hand on him!" Matt's on his feet now and absolutely losing his shit at... Nothing.

All this anger, this pure hatred, is being directed at an empty patch of air in Matt's living room. Not even to a piece of furniture.

At the yelling, Spatula scrambles out of the cat bed (Peter hadn't even noticed her) and sprints into the bedroom, probably to hide. Peter doesn't blame her.

This is... Terrifying. This is actually, legitimately, scaring Peter. He's seen Wade lose it on 'the boxes' on one occasion, but that wasn't exactly a surprise, considering how open he is about being unstable and how he talks to the boxes casually as well. He even introduced them to Peter one time, as strange as it was.

But Matt has never even sort of shown anything like those tendencies.

"Shut the fuck up! I'd never fucking touch him!" Matt turns to Wade, and desperation is carved into every line of his face, from the big, scared eyes, to the downturned lips. "Tell him I haven't! Tell him I wouldn't!"

"Matt," Wade says very gently, and Peter doesn't miss the way he's deliberately keeping space between himself and Matt. "There's no one there."

"I– what? No–" Matt turns back toward the empty air, then back to Wade. "He's there– he's right there! I can hear him!"

"There's nobody here, Matt. It's just you and me, okay?"

"No! No– I can hear him!" Matt repeats. "I can fucking  _ smell  _ him!"

"There's nobody else here. I promise," Wade continues, waving his hand through the space Matt had just been in a one-sided screaming match with. "See? Nobody there."

Peter can see from his position on the stairway landing that Matt has started to dig his fingernails into his wrists to the point that blood is welling up around a couple of them. Wade must notice this too.

"Matt, I swear to your stupid fucking God there's nobody else here. He isn't here. C'mon... Don't scratch yourself up like that. Come here," Wade continues, and Matt actually does take a step toward him. Then another. Then another.

Then he stops and whips around and screams, "Don't fucking touch me!" at absolutely nothing again. "I'll fucking kill you!"

Peter wants to help, but he doesn't think there's anything he could possibly do to make this better. He'd be shit at calming Matt down since he has no clue what's happening, and he's so scared that he knows Matt would take his fear the wrong way and get even more freaked out.

Wade actually takes the final step needed to close the gap between himself and Matt, a risky move, considering the way Matt is screaming death threats at a … hallucination?.

Matt is completely rigid with Wade's arms wrapped around him, but he doesn't lash out or pull away, which Peter assumes is good.

"Matthew Murdock," Wade says, "there is nobody else here. It's you, and me, and your damn cat, and that's it. I'm the only one here, and I'm the only one touching you."

"But--" Matt starts.

"He's dead, Matt. He's cold, and dead, and rotting in the fucking ground, which is way better than he deserves. But the point is that he's dead. He's never going to touch you again."

Wade continues to try and calm Matt down, holding his hands over Matt's ears even though it won't help at all considering the sounds are being manufactured inside Matt's head, and while he does this, he takes the time to mouth "stay there" at Peter.

Matt appears to stop shaking after a few minutes, and Wade finally stops his constant soft repetitions of "It's okay" and "I've got you" and "just listen to my heart, okay?"

Honestly, Peter feels like he's intruding. Like he's seeing something he shouldn't be allowed to. Seeing Matt crying is off-putting, as is seeing Wade without a single bit of the Deadpool persona in place. And seeing both of them together makes him feel incredibly voyeuristic.

With Matt somewhat calmer, Wade finally moves one hand down to Matt's side and moves the other to the side of his face, another slightly uncomfortable sight for Peter.

Are they normally like this when they're alone together?

Peter was under the assumption that they were friends. Friends who sleep together, but still just friends. He's no longer sure what to assume.

In the time that Peter's been averting his eyes and trying not to listen in, Wade has moved his arm to around Matt's shoulders and started walking him over to the bedroom.

He catches the words, "You need to sleep this off," just as the two of them move through the doorway and out of sight.

Peter stays on the landing like Wade had told him to, but it's close to ten minutes before Wade comes back out again, this time shutting the door behind him.

"Sorry, wanted to make sure that he was actually asleep before I left him alone," Wade explains. "You don't have to stay up there, you can come down here."

Peter nods and starts to slowly walk down the stairs, pulling off his mask and trying to get all the questions running through his mind put into some sort of order.

"You said Matt was hurt," Peter finally settles on saying as he reaches the bottom of the stairs. "Was that what you meant?"

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS (SPOILERS!!!)  
-A character has hallucinations.  
-The sexual abuse experienced by a character as a child is discussed.
> 
> Check me out on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone.tumblr.com and don't forget to leave kudos and comments! Keep reading if you're wondering where I've been:
> 
> Oof, it's been a while guys. Sorry for the hiatus, and sorry for the short chapter I'm coming back with. I am just recently getting back into writing after a pretty major mental breakdown, and school is kind of tough atm considering my profs haven't had the greatest transition to online classes for all the coronavirus stuff going on. I'll try and have another chapter for this next week, and before that another work set in a future after this fic in the tvg universe so look forward to that!!!

**Author's Note:**

> This should hopefully update on a weekly or maybe twice-weekly schedule, but as many of you know I'm about to start college, so that could throw off any upload schedule I plan. Follow me on tumblr at dumbbitchnumberone for updates on the progress of the story as well as more fun stuff! My ask box is always open, and I love to hear from you guys!


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